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Date: | Fri Mar 31 17:18:50 2006 |
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The German proto-neoclassicals were
doing it that way as early as 1841, and
Marshall drew off of them, although without
attribution. Also, in the English language
tradition Fleeming Jenkin did it before him.
My understanding is that Marshall was very
much focused on explaining the market for
bread, the most important commodity in the
average person's consumption basked in England
even still in the late 1800s. For that market,
quantity as driven by weather, is the more
exogenous factor, with price responding.
It was the French, starting with Cournot
and continuing with Walras, who put price on
the horizontal axis. With the relative decline
of agriculture our discussions have looked more
like the Walrasian one with price exogenous to
quantity rather than in the German/Marshallian
perspective.
Barkley Rosser
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