The Economics of Alfred Marshall: Revisiting Marshall’s Legacy

288 Pages·2003·14.05 MB·English

by  Richard Arena

The Economics of Alfred Marshall
Also by Richard Arena
SRAFFA: Trente AnsA pres (co-editor with J.L. Ravix)
KEYNES ET LES NOUVEAUX KEYNESIENS (co-editor with D. Torre)
THE ECONOMICS OF J. A. SCHUMPETER: Economic Development and Institutional
Change (co-editor with C. Dangel-Hagnauer)
The Economics of
Alfred Marshall
Revisiting Marshall's Legacy
Edited by
Richard Arena
Professor ofE conomics
University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France
and
Michel Quere
Research Director
lnstitut de Droit et d'Economie de Ia Finne et de l'lndustrie
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France
* Editorial matter, selection and Chapter 1 © Richard Arena
and Michel Quere 2003
Chapter 10 © Michel Quere 2003
Chapter 12 © Richard Arena 2003
Chapters 2-9, 11, 13-14 © Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 2003
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 978-1-4039-0168-2
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication
may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90
Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified
as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2003 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and
17S Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
Companies and representatives throughout the world
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.
Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom
and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European
Union and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-50782-5 ISBN 978-0-230-00103-9 (eBook)
DOl 10.1007/978-0-230-00103-9
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The economics of Alfred Marshall : revisiting Marshall's legacy I edited by
Richard Arena and Michel Quere.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Marshall, Alfred, 1842-1924. 2. Economists-Great Britain.
3. Economics-History. I. Arena, R. (Richard) II. Quere, Michel,
19S9-
HB 103.M3 E28 2003
330.1 S'7- dc21 2002073S42
10 9 876S4321
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 OS 04 03
Contents
Notes on the Contributors vii
1 Introductory Remarks 1
Richard Arena and Michel Quire
Part I The Legacy of Marshall's Economics
2 The Return of the 'White Elephant' 13
Giacomo Becattini
3 Dealing with Complexity: Marshall and Keynes
on the Nature of Economic Thinking 32
Roberto Marchionatti
4 Alfred Marshall on Social Capital 53
David Reisman
5 Marshall's Objective: Making Orthodox Economics
Intelligible to Business Leaders 67
Laurence S. Moss
6 Alfred Marshall's Partial Equilibrium: Dynamics
in Disguise 84
MarcoDardi
7 Competition and Evolution: The Marshallian Conciliation
Enterprise 113
Peter Groenewegen
Part II Economic Evolution and the Organization
of Industry: Marshallian Insights
8 Alfred Marshall's Principles and Industry and Trade: Two
Books or One? Marshall and the Joint Stock Company 137
John K. Whitaker
9 From the Representative to the Equilibrium Firm:
Why Marshall was not a Marshallian 158
Neil Hart
v
vi Contents
10 Increasing Returns and Competition: Learning from
a Marshallian Perspective 182
Michel Quere
11 Efficiency and Time 202
Brian J. Loasby
12 Organization and Knowledge in Alfred Marshall's
Economics 221
Richard Arena
13 Some Remarks on Marshallian External Economies
and Industrial Tendencies 240
Marco Bellandi
14 Requirements and Patterns of Marshallian Evolution:
Their Impact on the Notion of Industrial District 254
Tiziano Raffaelli
Index 269
Notes on the Contributors
Richard Arena is Professor of Economics at the University of Nice
Sophia-Antipolis. He was the first chairman of the Steering Committee
and one of the founders of the European Society for the History of
Economic Thought. He is presently the Director of the French research
network, History of Economic Thought and Economic Methodology,
supported by CNRS. He co-edited several books including Sraffa trente
ans apres (1990), Keynes and the Kenesians (1993), The Economics of
[.A. Schumpeter (2002) and some articles on Alfred Marshall.
Giacomo Becattini was born in Florence in 1927. He is Professor of
Economics in the University of Florence, an honorary member of
Trinity Hall (Cambridge), a member of the National Academy of Lincei,
and a former president of the Italian Economic Association. He has
won several awards for his contributions to economics, the latest being
the Invernizzi Prize for 2002. Previously published works include
Il concetto d'industria e la teoria del valore (Turin 1962), and soon to be
published is Industria e carattere. Alfred Marshall e l'economica vittoriana
(Turin 2002).
Marco Bellandi is doctor of research and Associate Professor of Political
Economy at the Faculty of Economics of the Universita degli studi di
Firenze, where he teaches economics and industrial organization. He is
on the executive board of Economia e politica industriale, and he is a
member of the scientific committee of CEDIMES (Centre d'Etude Inter
national et des Mouvements Economiques et Sociaux, Paris). His main
fields of investigation are industrial districts (including an article on the
industrial district in Alfred Marshall, first published in 1982) and indus
trial organization.
Marco Dardi is Professor at the Institute of Political Economy, Univer
sity of Florence. Since 1993, he has been the Director of the Inter
university Centre for Game Theory and Applications. His main
research interests are decision theory and the history of economic
thought. He published extensively, especially on the problems of labour
markets and industrial organization, and on British economic thought
in the nineteenth-century.
vii
viii Notes on the Contributors
Peter Groenewegen is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University
of Sydney. He previously directed the Centre for the Study of the History
of Economic Thought at the same University. Among his published work
is the meticulous biography of Alfred Marshall, A Soaring Eagle (1995).
Neil Hart is a lecturer in the School of Economics and Finance at the
University of Western Sydney, Australia. His research interests include
the history of economic thought, industry policy and macroeconomic
theory. Papers on aspects of Marshall's economics have been published in
journals such as the Cambridge Journal of Economics, Journal of Economic
Methodology, Australian Economic Papers and The History of Economics
Review.
Brian J. Loasby is Emeritus Professor at the Economics Department,
University of Stirling. He has published widely on the theory of economic
organization, methodology, and the history of economic ideas, including
Smith and Keynes. His work includes Choice, Complexity and Ignorance
(1976), The Mind and Method of the Economist (1989), Equilibrium and
Evolution (1991) and Knowledge Institutions and Evolution in Economics
(1999) - joint winner of the Schumpeter Prize 2000 - and also many
journal articles and contributions to books.
Roberto Marchionatti is Professor of Economics at the University of
Turin, Italy. He has published extensively in the fields of history of
economic thought and industrial economics. He is the editor of Karl
Marx Critical Responses (Routledge 1998) amd Piero Sraffa's Political
Economy. A Centenary Estimate (Routledge 2002).
Laurence S. Moss teaches in the Economics Department at Babson
College in Massachusetts. Moss's other writings on Marshall include
'Biological Theory and Technological Entrepreneurship in [Alfred]
Marshall's Writings' (Eastern Economic Journal, 1982, 8: 3-13) and 'Evolu
tionary Choice and Marshall's Abandoned Second Volume' (Economie
Appliquee, 43: 85-98). Moss is currently serving as editor-in-chief of The
American Journal of Economics and Sociology which is now in its sixty-first
year of continuous publication. His interests include the history of eco
nomic thought, law and economics and the economics of the transition
economy.
Michel Quere is Research Director in Economics at the French National
Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). He joined the CNRS in 1990
Notes on the Contributors ix
and belongs to a research group in economics ('Institut de Droit et
d'Economie de la Firme et de l'Industrie') located in Sophia-Antipolis.
His main research interests are the history of economic thought, the
theory of the firm and the economics of innovation. He is the author of
various pieces related to the economics of Alfred Marshall.
Tiziano Raffaelli is Associate Professor of the History of Economic
Thought, University of Cagliari. His main fields of research are classical
political economy, the Cambridge School of economics and the meth
odology of economics. Co-editor of Alfred Marshall's Lectures to Women
(Elgar 1995), he is the author of books in Italian on Smith and economic
methodology. His next book will be Marshall's Evolutionary Economics
(Routledge 2002). He is managing editor of the Marshall Studies Bulletin.
David Reisman is Professor of Economics at the University of Surrey
and the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is the author
of The Economics of Alfred Marshall, Alfred Marshall: Progress and Politics
and Alfred Marshall's Mission, as well as of a number of other books and
articles on political economy.
John K. Whitaker is Georgia Bankard Professor of Economics at the
University of Virginia. He has worked on issues in economic theory
and the history of economic thought and has written extensively on
Alfred Marshall, whose correspondence and early manuscripts he has
edited.