Abstract
For economic science to begin, the object which that science is to investigate must be defined unambiguously. This definition was first provided by Adam Smith in Chapter 7 of Book 1 of the Wealth of Nations. There Smith defined the object of the analysis of value and distribution to be the mode of determination of ‘natural’ prices. Marshall replaced the evocative label ‘natural’ with the more prosaic ‘normal’.
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Eatwell, J. (2018). Natural and Normal Conditions. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_741
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_741
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Print ISBN: 978-1-349-95188-8
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