Cairnesian Economics – A Road Not Taken

Roger McCain

No 2012-4, School of Economics Working Paper Series from LeBow College of Business, Drexel University

Abstract: John Elliott Cairnes (1823-1875) is best known for his defense of the wages fund doctrine after Mill’s abandonment of it. This essay argues that Cairnes’ ideas represented a substantive advance in classical political economy, in that his ideas were more coherent than those of his predecessors, and that the defense of the wages fund was necessary for that coherence. A specific interpretation of “coherence” is given, and Cairnes’ understanding of supply and demand is contrasted with that of Marshall, in Marshallean terms, and is shown to have some affinities to the ideas of Edgeworth.

Keywords: John Elliott Cairnes; classical political economy; wages fund (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B12 B31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 9 pages
Date: 2012-05-12
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxRDnd8cEKndX0Fnc ... Wdz6ynsLVynDFsJYCgnA Full text (application/pdf)

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:ris:drxlwp:2012_004

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in School of Economics Working Paper Series from LeBow College of Business, Drexel University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Richard C. Barnett ().