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Date: | Wed Apr 12 15:54:51 2006 |
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Actually, a labour theory of value was basically a "British peculiarity"
more than the "normal" classical theory of value. From the Scholastics up to
authors such as the Italian Davanzati or Galiani, the "normal" theory of
value was based on the idea of utility. Smith's position was complex (the
value of use is in fact the utility), and only with Ricardo we had a pure
labour theory of value. But in France (Say, Bastiat, Rossi), in USA (Carey),
in Italy (almost all!), or even in England (Senior for instance) economists
considered the value as a matter of both rarity and utility. Therefore, the
"subjective" theory of value of Jevons or Edgeworth was a revolution with
respect to Ricardo, but not with respect to the great part of the classical
economists.
What was really new in Neoclassical economics was the idea of the value as
depending on "demand function" and "supply function": the idea of price as
the encounter between demand and supply was much older, but in neoclassical
economics (thanks also to mathematics) the idea of "function" (of quantity
in particular) became central for understanding value -- and related to this
there was also the idea of "marginal utility".
The real "revolution" was the Paretian one (1900), that represents a really
new theory of values based on choices (an anticipation of Samuelson's
revealed preferences).
Luigino Bruni
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