Working paper at SSRN
Abstract Jevons composed his value theory of nonentities. These creatures are elusive. Subsequent formal refinements did not eliminate the fundamental flaw but made it only harder to detect. A vacuous formal structure is one that cannot be interpreted in some domain. For want of any correspondence in the monetary economy, Jevons's approach could not produce viable results. Roughly speaking, Jevons made value dependent on subjective factors. This paper gives a rigorous formal proof that value is determined by objective conditions. Within the structural-axiomatic framework, there is no formal spare room for the major behavioral nonentities utility, optimization, rational expectations, and equilibrium.
For the complete set of foundational equations — structural axioms, definitions, and behavioral propensity function — see Wikimedia AXEC61.
