Marshall’s External Economies: Economic Evolution and Patterns of Development

Neil Hart ()
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Neil Hart: School of Economics and Industrial Relations Research Centre, University of New South Wales

A chapter in Marshall and the Marshallian Heritage, 2021, pp 79-100 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract George Stigler, like Piero Sraffa before him, characterised Marshall’s doctrine of external economies as playing a major role in permitting an analytical reconciliation of competition and increasing returns, thus repairing a major gap in classical price theory. However, such a characterisation represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the role Marshall intended external economies to play in his analysis. These misinterpretations neglect the essentially evolutionary nature of Marshall’s analysis of the organisation and development of industry. A consideration of some aspects of recent approaches to economic geography, including the formation of industrial districts, helps to emphasise the role Marshall intended to be assigned to external economies in his writings.

Keywords: Alfred Marshall; Evolutionary economic geography; External economies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:pshchp:978-3-030-53032-7_4

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-53032-7_4

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