Marshall’s views on industrial organization rest on his early interest in mental philosophy: routines are necessary for the functioning of both mind and society, though in either case they enhance the dangers of excessive specialization and ‘overburdening’. Marshall’s ideal mix was the subordination of a powerful and growing set of routines to human creativity and foresight. The ‘neurophysiological analogy’ helps to understand his opinions on division of labour, business concentration, localization, and other general issues of industrial economics. The paper aims to bring together the dispersed threads of Marshall’s seminal research on industrial economics, and examines how his conception inspired a group of Cambridge-trained industrial economists (MacGregor, Chapman, Layton, Robertson, A. Robinson, Lavington, Sargant Florence). However, the core of Marshall’s conception was never brought to the appropriate level of abstraction and slowly sank into oblivion. The final part of the paper highlights the rediscovery of Marshall’s industrial economics in the form of the capability theory of the firm, seen as the main alternative to Coase’s transaction cost explanation of firm size.

Whatever happened to Marshall's industrial economics?

RAFFAELLI, TIZIANO
2004-01-01

Abstract

Marshall’s views on industrial organization rest on his early interest in mental philosophy: routines are necessary for the functioning of both mind and society, though in either case they enhance the dangers of excessive specialization and ‘overburdening’. Marshall’s ideal mix was the subordination of a powerful and growing set of routines to human creativity and foresight. The ‘neurophysiological analogy’ helps to understand his opinions on division of labour, business concentration, localization, and other general issues of industrial economics. The paper aims to bring together the dispersed threads of Marshall’s seminal research on industrial economics, and examines how his conception inspired a group of Cambridge-trained industrial economists (MacGregor, Chapman, Layton, Robertson, A. Robinson, Lavington, Sargant Florence). However, the core of Marshall’s conception was never brought to the appropriate level of abstraction and slowly sank into oblivion. The final part of the paper highlights the rediscovery of Marshall’s industrial economics in the form of the capability theory of the firm, seen as the main alternative to Coase’s transaction cost explanation of firm size.
2004
Raffaelli, Tiziano
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11568/88711
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