Marshall, Alfred

Marshall, Alfred, 1842–1924, English economist. At Cambridge, where he taught from 1885 to 1908, he exerted great influence on the development of economic thought of the time; one of his students was John Maynard Keynes. He systematized the classical economic theories and made new analyses in the same manner, thus laying the foundation of the neoclassical school of economics. He was concerned with theories of costs, value, and distribution and developed a concept of marginal utility. His Principles of Economics (1890) was for years the standard work and is still widely read. Among his other works are Industry and Trade (1919) and Money, Credit, and Commerce (1923).

Bibliography

See A. C. Pigou, ed., Memorials of Alfred Marshall (1925, repr. 1966). What I Remember (1947), by M. P. Marshall, his wife, has some biographical material on him. See studies by H. J. Davenport (1935, repr. 1965) and C. Kerr (1969).

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Marshall, Alfred

(born July 26, 1842, London, Eng.—died July 13, 1924, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire) British economist, one of the founders of English neoclassical economics. The first principal of University College, Bristol (1877–81), and a professor at the University of Cambridge (1885–1908), he reexamined and extended the ideas of classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo. His best-known work, Principles of Economics (1890), introduced several influential economic concepts, including elasticity of demand, consumer's surplus, and the representative firm. His writings on the theory of value proposed time as a factor in analysis and reconciled the classical cost-of-production principle with the theory of marginal utility. See also classical economics.

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Marshall, Alfred 

Born July 26, 1842, in London; died July 13, 1924, in Cambridge. English economist, professor of political economy at Cambridge University (1885-1908).

Marshall founded the Cambridge School of vulgar political economy. He considered himself a successor of D. Ricardo and interpreted his teachings in a subjective and psychological spirit. Marshall eclectically combined already established vulgar theories of the costs of production, demand and supply, productivity, and abstention with the theories of marginal utility and marginal productivity that had become widespread in the late 19th century. Marshall tried to extend the teachings of C. Darwin to the field of social relations. Under the influence of H. Spencer, he viewed evolution as the only form of social development and propagated the false idea of the smooth development of the capitalist economy. In his research Marshall used mathematical and graphic methods of analysis. Marshall’s views had a great influence on the development of bourgeois economic thought and are important in modern bourgeois economic science.

WORKS

The Pure Theory of Foreign Trade and the Pure Theory of Domestic Values. London, 1879.
The Economics of Industry. London, 1889.
Principles of Economics. London, 1890.
Elements of Economics. London, 1892.
Industry and Trade. London, 1919.
Money, Credit and Commerce. London, 1923.