Alfred Marshall - Economics

Economics

He desired to improve the mathematical rigor of economics and transform it into a more scientific profession. In the 1870s he wrote a small number of tracts on international trade and the problems of protectionism. In 1879, many of these works were compiled into a work entitled The Pure Theory of Foreign Trade: The Pure Theory of Domestic Values. In the same year (1879) he published The Economics of Industry with his wife Mary Paley.

Although Marshall took economics to a more mathematically rigorous level, he did not want mathematics to overshadow economics and thus make economics irrelevant to the layman. Accordingly, Marshall tailored the text of his books to laymen and put the mathematical content in the footnotes and appendices for the professionals. In a letter to A. L. Bowley, he laid out the following system:

(1) Use mathematics as shorthand language, rather than as an engine of inquiry. (2) Keep to them till you have done. (3) Translate into English. (4) Then illustrate by examples that are important in real life (5) Burn the mathematics. (6) If you can’t succeed in 4, burn 3. This I do often."

Marshall had been Mary Paley's professor of political economy at Cambridge and the two were married in 1877, forcing Marshall to leave his position as a Fellow (college) of St John's College, Cambridge in order to comply with celibacy rules at the university. He became the first principal at University College, Bristol, which was the institution that later became the University of Bristol, again lecturing on political economy and economics. He perfected his Economics of Industry while at Bristol, and published it more widely in England as an economic curriculum; its simple form stood upon sophisticated theoretical foundations. Marshall achieved a measure of fame from this work, and upon the death of William Jevons in 1882, Marshall became the leading British economist of the scientific school of his time.

Marshall returned to Cambridge, via a brief period at Balliol College, Oxford during 1883–4, to take the seat as Professor of Political Economy in 1884 on the death of Henry Fawcett. At Cambridge he endeavored to create a new tripos for economics, a goal which he would only achieve in 1903. Until that time, economics was taught under the Historical and Moral Sciences Triposes which failed to provide Marshall the kind of energetic and specialized students he desired.