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Essay on Alfred Marshall
Alfred Marshall was the dominant figure in British economics (itself dominant in world economics) from about 1890 until his death in 1924. His specialty was microeconomics—the study of individual markets and industries, as opposed to the study of the whole economy. His most important book was Principles of Economics. In it Marshall emphasized that the price and output of a good are determined by both supply and demand: the two curves are like scissor blades that intersect at equilibrium. Modern economists trying to understand why the price of a good changes still start by looking for factors that may have shifted demand or supply. They owe this approach to Marshall (John, 1990).
Marshall grew up in the London suburb of Clapham, being educated at the Merchant Taylor's School where he showed academic promise and a particular aptitude for mathematics. In
1868 he became a College Lecturer in Moral Sciences at St John's, specializing in teaching political economy. By about 1870 he seems to have committed his career to developing this subject and helping to transform it into a new science of economics. For several years he labored persistently to develop and refine his economic ideas, and to deepen his understanding and grasp of both the existing economic literature and the economic reality which was its subject matter.
In 1875 he visited the USA to probe economic conditions, and throughout his life he was tireless in his efforts to master the practicalities of the economic world. Prior to 1879 his publications were meager (John, 1990). He had embarked on a book on international trade and problems of protectionism in the mid-1870s, and before that he had worked out many of his distinctive theoretical ideas in the form of short essays (David, 1996). But the only part of this material to be made public was four of the theoretical appendices for the proposed international-trade volume....
