Religion and the reception of marginalism in Britain

Jeff Lipkes

Forum for Social Economics, 1997, vol. 26, issue 2, 21-42

Abstract: Did their religious beliefs play any role in the interest British economists took in marginal utility theory in the final third of the Nineteenth Century? I contrast the beliefs of the leading economists—Mill and his followers—who were unsympathetic to marginalism with the beliefs of those economists who embraced it. Mill’s followers were themselves sharply divided on key methodological questions, and I ask whether or not this division, too, may owe something to differing religious beliefs. I conclude, provisionally, that religion may indeed have played a significant role in determining the methodological predisposition of British economists between 1860 and 1900.

Date: 1997
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DOI: 10.1007/BF02770062

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