Alfred Marshall, 1842–1924: Partial Equilibrium and Useful Economics

Abstract

Alfred Marshall was born in Bermondsey in 1842. He was educated at the Merchant Taylor’s school in London, gaining a taste for mathematics. Subsequently, he completed the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos in 1865 and gained a fellowship at St John’s College. He then gradually switched to the moral sciences moving from philosophical, ethical and psychological studies to political economy. In 1868 he became College Lecturer in the Moral Sciences, by the early 1870s he was concentrating on advanced political economy teaching and working on a book on international trade. He wrote his first book Economics of Industry (1879) jointly with his wife, and privately printed material from a foreign trade manuscript (on the pure theory of domestic and international values). In 1884 he became Cambridge Professor of Political Economy until 1908 when Pigou (see Chapter 28, below) was appointed as his successor. His major work, Principles of Economics, was published in 1890 (eighth, and definitive edition, 1920). During retirement he published supplementary volumes (Industry and Trade in 1919, Money, Credit and Commerce in 1923) instead of the projected second volume of the Principles, which was to have covered these and other (public finance, monopoly, combinations, the role of the state) topics.