Alfred Marshall
Alfred Marshall
Alfred Marshallwas one of the most influential economists of his time. His book, Principles of Economics, was the dominant economic textbook in England for many years. It brings the ideas of supply and demand, marginal utility, and costs of production into a coherent whole. He is known as one of the founders of neoclassical economics...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth26 July 1842
acquire carefully consider direct economics economy-and-economics entering firstly knowledge light plan practical purpose reference secondly though throw work
Economics has as its purpose firstly to acquire knowledge for its own sake, and secondly to throw light on practical issues. But though we are bound, before entering on any study, to consider carefully what are its uses, we should not plan out our work with direct reference to them.
ignorance class support
The hope that poverty and ignorance may gradually be extinguished derives indeed much support from the steady progress of the working classes during the 19th century.
use may want
In the absence of any short term in common use to represent all desirable things, or things that satisfy human wants, we may use the term Goods for that purpose.
want wealth humans
All wealth consists of desirable things; that is, things which satisfy human wants directly or indirectly: but not all desirable things are reckoned as wealth.
land names producers
Producer's Surplus is a convenient name for the genus of which the rent of land is the leading species.
differences degrees kind
Again, most of the chief distinctions marked by economic terms are differences not of kind but of degree.
effects labour
All labour is directed towards producing some effect.
character way income
And very often the influence exerted on a person's character by the amount of his income is hardly less, if it is less, than that exerted by the way in which it is earned.
rights law wealth
Individual and national rights to wealth rest on the basis of civil and international law, or at least of custom that has the force of law.
storm dull ruins
The commercial storm leaves its path strewn with ruin. When it is over there is calm, but a dull, heavy calm.
cutting pieces paper
We might as well reasonably dispute whether it is the upper or the under blade of a pair of scissors that cuts a piece of paper, as whether value is governed by demand or supply.
book simple topics
Though a simple book can be written on selected topics, the central doctrines of economics are not simple and cannot be made so.
oil imagination done
I admit that these terms and the diagrams connected with them repel some readers, and fill others with the vain imagination that they have mastered difficult economics problems, when really they have done little more than learn the language in which parts of those problems can be expressed, and the machinery by which they can be handled. When the actual conditions of particular problems have not been studied, such knowledge is little better than a derrick for sinking oil-wells erected where there are no oil-bearing strata.
rights use benefits
Material goods consist of useful material things, and of all rights to hold, or use, or derive benefits from material things, or to receive them at a future time.