Marshall's treatment of technological change in Industry and Trade

Peter Groenewegen

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2010, vol. 17, issue 5, 1253-1269

Abstract: The phrase 'technological change' does not appear in the index of Marshall's second major book, Industry and Trade, nor does it appear in the index of that of his first major work, Principles of Economics. Yet the nature of the contents of the second book, Industry and Trade, indicates that technological progress is part of the analysis, with special reference to Marshall's discussion of the industrial leadership secured by England during the nineteenth century, and the claims thereto by France, Germany and the United States (Book I, chapters III-VIII). Causes of technological change, and its impact on the size of firms were discussed by Marshall in Book II (especially chapters II and III), while the matter is also treated in the context of changes in business organisation (Book II, chapters X-XII). This paper, in its various sections, therefore acts as a reminder of the fact that Marshall's Industry and Trade was primarily concerned with 'the origins of modern industrial technique and business organisation', as he put it himself in the introduction.

Keywords: Alfred Marshall; technological change; industry and trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09672567.2010.522244 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:eujhet:v:17:y:2010:i:5:p:1253-1269

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/REJH20

DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2010.522244

Access Statistics for this article

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought is currently edited by José Luís Cardoso

More articles in The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().