Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The history of economic thought and its role
- 2 The prehistory of political economy
- 3 William Petty and the origins of political economy
- 4 From body politic to economic tables
- 5 Adam Smith
- 6 Economic science at the time of the French Revolution
- 7 David Ricardo
- 8 The ‘Ricardians’ and the decline of Ricardianism
- 9 Karl Marx
- 10 The marginalist revolution: the subjective theory of value
- 11 The Austrian school and its neighbourhood
- 12 General economic equilibrium
- 13 Alfred Marshall
- 14 John Maynard Keynes
- 15 Joseph Schumpeter
- 16 Piero Sraffa
- 17 The age of fragmentation
- 18 Where are we going? Some (very tentative) considerations
- References
- Index of names
- Subject index
10 - The marginalist revolution: the subjective theory of value
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The history of economic thought and its role
- 2 The prehistory of political economy
- 3 William Petty and the origins of political economy
- 4 From body politic to economic tables
- 5 Adam Smith
- 6 Economic science at the time of the French Revolution
- 7 David Ricardo
- 8 The ‘Ricardians’ and the decline of Ricardianism
- 9 Karl Marx
- 10 The marginalist revolution: the subjective theory of value
- 11 The Austrian school and its neighbourhood
- 12 General economic equilibrium
- 13 Alfred Marshall
- 14 John Maynard Keynes
- 15 Joseph Schumpeter
- 16 Piero Sraffa
- 17 The age of fragmentation
- 18 Where are we going? Some (very tentative) considerations
- References
- Index of names
- Subject index
Summary
The ‘marginalist revolution’: an overview
The term ‘marginalist revolution’ is commonly utilised to indicate a sudden change of direction in economic science, with the abandonment of the classical – and, more precisely, Ricardian – approach, and the shift to a new approach based on a subjective theory of value and the analytical notion of marginal utility. The outbreak of the ‘revolution’ is commonly located in the years between 1871 and 1874, when the main writings were published of the leaders of the Austrian marginalist school, Carl Menger (1840–1921), of the British school, William Stanley Jevons (1835–82), and of the French (Lausanne) school, Léon Walras (1834–1910). In fact, 1871 saw the appearance of both the Principles of pure economics by Menger and The theory of political economy by Jevons, while Walras brought out his Elements of pure economics in 1874.
Let us, however, once again reiterate that the ‘marginalist revolution’ had had important precursors, as we will see again below. Moreover, the differences between the Austrian imputation approach, the French general economic equilibrium and Marshallian partial equilibriums were quite important, as far as both method and the basic view of the functioning of the economy were concerned.
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- The Wealth of IdeasA History of Economic Thought, pp. 278 - 296Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005