“Economic Equilibrium through Different Lenses: A study of Utility, Pain, Pleasure, and Scarcity.”

Description

Write an essay of at least 5 pages on the following:

NOTE: The point of the essay is not to work through the details of the different theories; nor to judge each, on its own, or in relation to the others, and to other lines in economic thought: are they right or wrong? The point is to think through the ways in which they define what economic theory should be, what it should include and exclude, and how it should study what needs to be studied.

Jevons founds his economic theory on the calculus of pain and pleasure adopted from Bentham. Walras and Menger found their theories on scarcity: they define the economic as the situation that arises when the quantity of goods is insufficient to satisfy all the wants to be satisfied by those goods.
I don’t think that there is any fundamental opposition between these two approaches: both employ the concept of utility, and, especially, that of marginal utility (though none of the three – Jevons, Menger, Walras – uses the term “marginal utility” itself). They are all looking for a mechanism to bring about an equilibrium of supply and demand. Nonetheless, pain and pleasure on the one hand, scarcity on the other, are not the same. So:
What is similar, and what is different in the starting-points themselves – pain and pleasure, scarcity? Is there a difference in their focus? Does one point you in a different direction than the other? What is similar in the mechanisms? Is there anything significantly different? Will there be significant differences in the result?
(Note: later neoclassical economics, on the whole, goes for the scarcity approach; and, for example, Robbins, Hicks and Mises all reject pain and pleasure at least in their Benthamite form. You don’t need to take this up, but it’s worth remembering.)
Some references:
Jevons, W” The Theory of Political Economy, 1 or 2nd edition.
Walras, L ” Elements of Theoretical Economics 3rd edition
Menger,C” principles of Economics