- Published: 1 Sep 2017
- DOI: 10.4324/9781138201521-HET11-1
Contents
- Abstract
- Introduction
- The origin of marginalism and the works of Jevons, Menger and Walras
- Refining the notion of utility
- The making of a marginal productivity theory
- Marshall’s marginalism
- A final wave of marginalism
- Marginalist economics as ‘neoclassical’
- References
Marginalist (or Neoclassical) Economics
Department of Economics and Management, University of Padua, Italy
Abstract
Marginalist economics is foremost an application of differential calculus to major problems of rational economic choice. Some clear marginalist ideas were put forward since the early decades of the nineteenth centuty. A first proper wave of marginalism occurred in 1871–77; it focused mainly on marginal utility as a measure of scarcity and formalized a theory of exchange characterized by proportionality between prices and marginal utilities; the marginalist principles referred to production were at that time still rather tentative and incomplete. Further studies at the turn of the nineteenth century both improved the analytical description of utility and provided a marginal productivity theory of the demand for factor services: a ‘supply and demand’ theory of prices and distribution was then built on marginalist principles. A third wave (1934–39) brought the analytical structure of marginalism to the present state. In more recent times it became a terminological convention to describe marginalist economics as ‘neoclassical’.
Related Searches
Keywords
- Diminishing Returns
- Exchange
- Indifference Curve
- Individualism
- Marginalism
- Neoclassical Economics
- Paradox Of Value
- Supply And Demand
- Utility
- Value Theory
Subjects
- Economic History and Economic Thought
- Formalization and Mathematization
- Formalization of Economic Propositions
- Markets
- Demand and Supply
- General and Partial Equilibria
- Value and Distribution
- Cost of Production Theories of Value
- Income Distribution (Wages, Profits, Rents…)
- Labour Theory of Value
- Subjective Theories of Value
Currents of Thought
- Marginalist and Neoclassical Schools
- American School
- Austrian School
- British Marginalism
- German Use Value School
- Lausanne School
- Swedish School