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THE “SOCIAL VALUE” DEBATE: AN EARLY CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN MARGINALISM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2023

Luca Fiorito
Luca Fiorito*
Affiliation:
Luca Fiorito: Università degli Studi di Palermo. Email: luca.fiorito.1967@gmail.com
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Abstract

This paper provides a reconstruction of the debate on “social value” among early marginalists in the US. This will be done in three steps. The first step analyzes John B. Clark’s approach to social value as presented in his Distribution of Wealth; the second step deals with other influential contemporaries who adopted a similar social value perspective, with a main focus on Edwin R. A. Seligman; the third step discusses those critics who, with due differences in emphasis and style, animated the debate over social value, reviewing (among others) the contributions of Herbert J. Davenport, Joseph Schumpeter, Benjamin Anderson, John Maurice Clark, and George P. Watkins. The final section presents some conclusions.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , March 2024 , pp. 48 - 68
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the History of Economics Society

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