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Introduction: Competing Assessments of Alfred Marshall’s Economics

In: Equilibrium and Evolution

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  • Neil Hart

Abstract

This book re-examines the theoretical debates and controversies that characterised the 1920s, which Paul Samuelson has highlighted as being decisive to the development of economic analysis in the decades that followed. In these debates, attention was focused on what is now often referred to as Alfred Marshall’s ‘reconciliation problem’, characterised as the attempt to construct supply schedules under conditions of pure competition in the presence of increasing returns to scale. A solution to this dilemma was thought necessary in order to legitimise the partial equilibrium analysis of markets founded on demand and supply functions. It was generally concluded that Marshall’s attempts to resolve the ‘reconciliation problem’ had not only been unsuccessful but had also, as Mark Blaug (1962: 399) summarised, ‘raised false problems that took the best efforts of a generation of economists to solve’.

Suggested Citation

  • Neil Hart, 2012. "Introduction: Competing Assessments of Alfred Marshall’s Economics," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Equilibrium and Evolution, chapter 1, pages 1-13, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-36117-1_1
    DOI: 10.1057/9780230361171_1
    as

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