Marshall, Alfred
NAME: Marshall, Alfred.
ACHIEVEMENTS: Founded modern economics
NICKNAME/ALIAS: None.
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 26th July 1842, in Clapham, London, England.
DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: 13th July 1924, in Cambridge, England. Aged 82.
DISCIPLINE: Political economist.
FIELD: Economics.
LANGUAGE: English.
PARENTS: Father, William Marshall, mother, Rebecca Oliver.
SIBLINGS: Unknown.
SPOUSE: Mary Paley.
CHILDREN: None.
EDUCATION: Merchant Taylors' School, London; St John's College, Cambridge.
MAJOR WORK: ‘Principles of Economy’ (1890).
‘Industry and Trade’ (1919).
‘Money, Credit and Commerce’ (1923).
LIFE AND TIMES: After he graduated Marshall was given a college fellowship. His plan was to study molecular physics and to take holy orders but first he taught mathematics at a school in Bristol and then tutored undergraduates at Cambridge.
As soon as he went back to Cambridge, Marshall joined a discussion group that considered philosophical questions.
This led him to question his Christian beliefs, which he eventually rejected, instead taking up the study of metaphysics, then psychology and ethics.
During debates on social conditions how to improve them, Marshall was advised to read ‘Principles of Political Economy’, written by <influenced by> John Stuart Mill* in 1848. He was so impressed that he began to study the subject himself. He was stimulated even more by <influenced by> Karl Marx*.
In 1868, Marshall began to lecture in moral science then, after giving lectures on logic and the utilitarian philosophy of <lectured on> Jeremy Bentham*, he began to specialize in economics. He stayed on at St John's for the next nine years, working to establish political economy as a separate discipline in the university.
Although he only published an occasional article, it was during this period of his life that Marshall formulated most of his economic doctrines. He went on long walking tours in the Alps each summer, saying that he always did his best thinking in the open air.
Marshall maintained that the analytical methods of historical economists like Marx couldn’t give an accurate picture and that socialists were too stuck on the idea that the abolition of private property was the route to an economic Utopia.
He made a study of practical business operations and the conditions of the blue-collar worker, looking at the techniques and operations in all the major industries. At the same time, he had discussions with trade union leaders and members of other working
men’s associations.
Then he studied foreign trade, in the course of which he visited America in 1875. He met academic economists at Harvard and Yale, but his main aim was to look at the question of protection in trade. When he went back to Britain, he began to lecture on ‘The Economic Condition of America’.
In 1877, he married one of his former pupils, Mary Paley, the great-granddaughter of <wife descendant of> Paley*. Two years later he published his first book, aimed at general readers, ‘Economics of Industry’, and co-written with his wife.
Marshall left Cambridge and went to Bristol, as the first principal of University College and Professor of Political Economy and, in 1883, succeeded Arnold Toynbee as Lecturer in Political Economy at Balliol College, Oxford.
The following year he went back to Cambridge as Professor of Political Economy. By now, Marshall’s doctrines were fully formed and although he still hadn’t published them, he was happy to share his ideas in his lectures and in discussions with pupils and friends.
When ‘Principles of Economics’ was published in 1890, his ideas were
already being adopted and worked on by his colleagues and pupils. The book
was immediately recognised as a major contribution to economic theory,
was reprinted almost continuously and translated into many different
languages.
Marshall’s practical understanding of real, rather than theoretical, economics resulted in several new factors being introduced into economic theory for the first time. Among them were volatility of demand in the marketplace, consumers’ surplus, quasi-rent and the representative firm. His inclusion of the time factor in analysis was a new and critical idea as well.
Marshall was the leading political economist of his time and served on enquiries into labor, local taxation and the aged poor. In 1903 for the Treasury he wrote ‘Memorandum on the Fiscal Policy of International Trade'.
He retired from his Cambridge professorship in 1908 and although students of olitical economy were still comparatively few in number, they were of high calibre. The economist <influenced> Keynes* was an undergraduate and when Marshall retired he invited Keynes to take up a lectureship.
In 1919, Marshall wrote ‘Industry and Trade’ which was an immediate popular success, and in 1923, ‘Money, Credit and Commerce’ was published.
ASSESSMENT: Marshall was one of the most important economists of his time and he had a great influence on economists who came after him.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: He revised the theories of <revised work of> Adam Smith*
ONELINER: Alfred Marshall, founder of modern economics
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Keynes, John Maynard, ed. Keynes, Geoffrey, Essays in Biography, Mercury
Books, London, 1933.
Dictionary of National Biography.