37 Facts About Alfred Marshall

Alfred Marshall was an English economist, and was one of the most influential economists of his time.

Alfred Marshall is known as one of the founders of neoclassical economics.

William Alfred Marshall was a devout strict Evangelical, "author of an Evangelical epic in a sort of Anglo-Saxon language of his own invention which found some favour in its appropriate circles" and of a tract titled Men's Rights and Women's Duties.

Alfred Marshall had two brothers and two sisters; a cousin was the economist Ralph Hawtrey.

Alfred Marshall grew up in Clapham and was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School and St John's College, Cambridge, where he demonstrated an aptitude in mathematics, achieving the rank of Second Wrangler in the 1865 Cambridge Mathematical Tripos.

Alfred Marshall experienced a mental crisis that led him to abandon physics and switch to philosophy.

Alfred Marshall began with metaphysics, specifically "the philosophical foundation of knowledge, especially in relation to theology".

Alfred Marshall saw that the duty of economics was to improve material conditions, but such improvement would occur, Marshall believed, only in connection with social and political forces.

Alfred Marshall was elected in 1865 to a fellowship at St John's College at Cambridge, and became lecturer in the moral sciences in 1868.

Alfred Marshall was Mary Paley's professor of political economy at Cambridge; they became a couple and were married in 1877, forcing Marshall to leave his position as a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge.

Alfred Marshall 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.

Alfred Marshall desired to improve the mathematical rigour of economics and transform it into a more scientific profession.

Accordingly, Alfred Marshall tailored the text of his books to laymen and put the mathematical content in the footnotes and appendices for the professionals.

Alfred Marshall 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.

Alfred Marshall achieved a measure of fame from this work, and upon the death of William Jevons in 1882, Alfred Marshall became the leading British economist of the scientific school of his time.

Alfred Marshall began his economic work, the Principles of Economics, in 1881, and spent much of the next decade at work on the treatise.

Alfred Marshall's work used both these approaches, but he focused more on costs.

Alfred Marshall noted that, in the short run, supply cannot be changed and market value depends mainly on demand.

Alfred Marshall pointed out that it is the prime or variable costs, which constantly recur, that influence the sale price most in this period.

Alfred Marshall was committed to partial equilibrium models over general equilibrium on the grounds that the inherently dynamical nature of economics made the former more practically useful.

Much of the success of Alfred Marshall's teaching and Principles book derived from his effective use of diagrams, which were soon emulated by other teachers worldwide.

Alfred Marshall was the first to develop the standard supply and demand graph demonstrating a number of fundamentals regarding supply and demand including the supply and demand curves, market equilibrium, the relationship between quantity and price in regards to supply and demand, the law of marginal utility, the law of diminishing returns, and the ideas of consumer and producer surpluses.

Alfred Marshall's model allowed a visual representation of complex economic fundamentals where before all the ideas and theories were only capable of being explained through words.

Alfred Marshall is considered to be one of the most influential economists of his time, largely shaping mainstream economic thought for the next fifty years, and being one of the founders of the school of neoclassical economics.

Alfred Marshall downplayed the contributions of certain other economists to his work, such as Leon Walras, Vilfredo Pareto and Jules Dupuit, and only grudgingly acknowledged the influence of Stanley Jevons himself.

Alfred Marshall was one of those who used utility analysis, but not as a theory of value.

Alfred Marshall used it as a part of the theory to explain demand curves and the principle of substitution.

Alfred Marshall popularised the use of supply and demand functions as tools of price determination ; modern economists owe the linkage between price shifts and curve shifts to Marshall.

Alfred Marshall was an important part of the "marginalist revolution"; the idea that consumers attempt to adjust consumption until marginal utility equals the price was another of his contributions.

Gary Becker, the 1992 Nobel prize winner in economics, has mentioned that Milton Friedman and Alfred Marshall were the two greatest influences on his work.

Alfred Marshall served as president of the first day of the 1889 Co-operative Congress.

Alfred Marshall hoped to continue work on his Principles but his health continued to deteriorate and the project had continued to grow with each further investigation.

Alfred Marshall had shied away from controversy during his life in a way that previous leaders of the profession had not, although his even-handedness drew great respect and even reverence from fellow economists, and his home at Balliol Croft in Cambridge had no shortage of distinguished guests.

Alfred Marshall died aged 81 at his home in Cambridge and is buried in the Ascension Parish Burial Ground.

Alfred Marshall's archive is available for consultation by appointment at the Marshall Library of Economics.

Alfred Marshall's wife was Mary Paley, an economist who was one of the first women students at Cambridge and a lecturer at Newnham College.

Alfred Marshall continued to live in Balliol Croft until her death in 1944; her ashes were scattered in the garden.