"Marshall did something much more effective than changing the answer. He changed the question. For Ricardo the Theory of Value was a means of studying the distribution of total output between wages, rent and profit, each considered as a whole. This is a big question. Marshall turned the meaning of Value into a little question: Why does an egg cost more than a cup of tea? It may be a small question but it is a very difficult and complicated one. It takes a lot of time and algebra to work out the theory of it. So it kept all Marshall’s pupils preoccupied for fifty years. They had no time to think about the big question, or even to remember that there was a big question, because they had to keep their noses right down to the grindstone, working out the theory of the price of a cup of tea."
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University of Cambridge facultyEconomists from EnglandNon-fiction authors from EnglandPeople from LondonUniversity of Oxford faculty
Original Language: English
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Joan Robinson, "An open letter from a Keynesian to a Marxist" (1953)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alfred_Marshall
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Alfred Marshall
1842 – 1924
Alfred Marshall (26 July 1842 – 13 July 1924) was a British economist, considered one of the most influential economists of his time. His book, Principles of Economics (1890), was the dominant economic textbook in England for many years. It brings the ideas of supply and demand, marginal utility, and costs of production into a coherent whole. He is known as one of the founders of economics.
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