Von Neumann's famous 9-page paper started life as a talk at Princeton and then became a paper in Germany, which was eventually translated into English. His interest in economics that led to that paper began as follows: When lecturing at Berlin in 1928 and 1929 he spent his summers back home in Budapest, and so did the economist Nicholas Kaldor, and they hit it off. Kaldor recommended that von Neumann read a book by the mathematical economist Léon Walras. Von Neumann found some faults in that book and corrected them, for example, replacing equations by inequalities. He noticed that Walras's General Equilibrium Theory and Walras' Law, which led to systems of simultaneous linear equations, could produce the absurd result that the profit could be maximized by producing and selling a negative quantity of a product. He replaced the equations by inequalities, introduced dynamic equilibria, among other things, and eventually produced the paper.
What economist did von Neumann get to know that spurred the interest in economics?
Nicholas Kaldor