What Is ‘Marshallianism’?

2021 ◽  
pp. 141-172
Author(s):  
Keith Tribe
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
London School ◽  
Economic Knowledge ◽  
Intellectual Style ◽  
Formal Approach ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Long Life ◽  
London School Of Economics ◽  
Clear Idea

Marshall’s intellectual heritage is often described as ‘Marshallianism’, a general designation of his intellectual style as teacher and writer. But what exactly might this mean? While it is not necessarily wrong to describe his work in this way, it is necessary to have a clear idea of what the term denotes. To begin with, the work of Marshall is distinguished from that of his near (senior) contemporary, Stanley Jevons; but his death in 1882 came at a point when his version of economics had been gaining ground in Britain. While soon eclipsed by Marshall, this more formal approach later became the trademark of the London School of Economics in the 1920s, mediated by its Professor of Political Economy, Edwin Cannan. Then the work of Marshall as a teacher is examined, identifying an approach that sought to encourage students to apply their economic knowledge to the contemporary world. What he sought to inculcate in his students is shown by a discussion of the work of two of his students, A. C. Pigou and Sydney Chapman. This is then followed by a consideration of the composition and editorial changes to Marshall’s Principles of Economics, first published in 1890 and reaching a very much changed final edition in 1920, in which form it continued to be reprinted for much of the twentieth century. Notwithstanding the long life of this work, it can then be shown that, by the 1920s, criticism of Marshall’s approach to economic analysis was increasing, signalling the demise of the Marshallian heritage.

The History of Sociology in Britain

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. H. Halsey
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
London School ◽  
History Of Sociology ◽  
Literature And Philosophy ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
London School Of Economics

This chapter discusses the battle between literature and science for domination of sociology, a topic that has rather been neglected as a theme in the history of sociology in Britain if also perhaps overheated nowadays in exchanges over relativism between the denizens of ‘cultural studies’ and the proponents of a ‘science of society’. The chapter argues that, traditionally, the social territory belonged to literature and philosophy. A challenge was then raised by science especially in the nineteenth century. Then, especially in the twentieth century, social science developed so as to turn a binary contrast into a triangular one. Sociology had three sources in Western thought: one literary (political philosophy), one quasi-scientific (the philosophy of history), and one scientific (biology). It is no accident that both sociology and social policy were placed first at the London School of Economics, the Fabian institution invented and fostered by Sidney and Beatrice Webb in 1895.

Book Reviews

2014 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 1194-1196
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
National Research Council ◽  
London School ◽  
Industrial Growth ◽  
East Anglia ◽  
The People ◽  
Research Associate ◽  
London School Of Economics

Roger Fouquet of the London School of Economics reviews “Power to the People: Energy in Europe over the Last Five Centuries”, by Astrid Kander, Paolo Malanima, and Paul Warde. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Examines the relationships between energy consumption and economic development in Europe over the last five centuries. Discusses preindustrial economies--traditional sources and constraints and dynamics; the first industrial revolution--a modern energy regime, the coal development block, and energy and industrial growth; and the second and third industrial revolutions--energy transitions in the twentieth century, major development blocks in the twentieth century and their impacts on energy, the role of energy in twentieth-century economic growth, and implications for the future. Kander is Professor of Economic History at Lund University. Malanima is Director of the Institute of Studies on Mediterranean Societies at the National Research Council in Italy. Warde is Reader in Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia and Research Associate at the Centre for History and Economics at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge.”

EVELINE MABEL BURNS: THE NEGLECTED CONTRIBUTIONS OF A SOCIAL SECURITY PIONEER

2012 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-337
Author(s):  
SHERRY DAVIS KASPER
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Years ◽  
London School ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Professional Career ◽  
World Class ◽  
London School Of Economics ◽  
World Class Universities

From the 1920s to the 1980s, Dr. Eveline Mabel Burns made significant contributions to the discipline of economics. During her career, she taught at world-class universities, including the London School of Economics and Columbia University. She published in the fields of labor economics, general economic theory, economic forecasting, methodology, and social security in leading economic journals. In the 1930s, she began her work in establishing the social security system in the United States. Yet, despite this multitude of accomplishments, the work of Eveline Mabel Burns is barely discernible in accounts of the evolution of twentieth-century economics. This essay remedies that neglect by explicating her career and economics. First, it describes her early years as an economist as she determined the ultimate course of her professional career. Second, it outlines the hybrid institutional method of analysis she used. Third, it describes how she made use of this methodology in her work on social security. Finally, it concludes with an interpretation of her neglect in twentieth-century economics that highlights her gender and her use of institutional methods of analysis.

Constructing Economic Science

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Tribe
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
New Media ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
University Education ◽  
London School ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
Economic Knowledge ◽  
Postwar Reconstruction ◽  
Means And Ends ◽  
London School Of Economics

Constructing Economic Science demonstrates how an existing public discourse, political economy, was transformed in the early twentieth century into a new university discipline: economics. This change in location brought about a restructuring of economic knowledge. Finance, student numbers, curricula, teaching, new media, and the demands of employment all played their part in shaping economics as it is known today. It was broadly accepted in the later nineteenth century that industrialising economies required the skilled and specialised workforce that universities could provide. Advocacy for the teaching of commercial subjects was widespread and international. In Cambridge, Alfred Marshall was alone in arguing that economics, not commerce, provided the most suitable training for the administration and business of the future; and in 1903 he founded the first three-year undergraduate economics programme. This was by no means the end of the story, however. What economics was, how Marshall thought it should be taught, had by the 1920s become contested, and in Britain the London School of Economics gained dominance in defining the new science. By the 1930s, American universities had already moved on from undergraduate to graduate teaching, whereas in Britain university education remained focussed upon undergraduate education. At the same time, public policy was reformulated in terms of economic means and ends—relating to postwar reconstruction, employment, and social welfare—and international economics became American economics. This study charts the conditions that initially shaped the “science” of economics, providing in turn a foundation for an understanding of the way in which this new language itself subsequently transformed public policy.

Michio Morishima 1923–2004

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
MEGHNAD DESAI
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
American Academy ◽  
Honorary Member ◽  
London School ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
Economic Association ◽  
London School Of Economics ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The University ◽  
Creative Life

Michio Morishima was one of the most distinguished economic theorists of his generation. He taught in Japan at Kyoto and Osaka Universities and in the UK at the University of Essex and the London School of Economics, where he spent the last thirty-four years of his very creative life. Morishima was a Visiting Professor at the University of Essex, 1968–9 and the Keynes Visiting Professor there, 1969–70, and Professor of Economics, later the John Hicks Professor of Economics, at the LSE. He was a Senior Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, where his friend and mentor Sir John Hicks, FBA was the Drummond Professor of Political Economy. Morishima also held a visiting position at the University of Siena in Italy for nearly thirty years from 1970. He was elected Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1975) and of the American Economic Association (1979).

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