Alfred Marshall

Running head: Alfred Marshall

Alfred Marshall in Economics

melinda Liticker

Grantham University

Abstract

Alfred Marshall was a great man who dominated the British economics from 1890 until 1924. He made many contributions to understanding economics with much focus on microeconomics.

Alfred Marshall

Alfred Marshall was born July 26, 1842 in Bermondsey, London, to a middle class working family and was considered to be a great mathematician. Marshall studied math at a college named St. John’s College- Cambridge but also limited his quantitative expressions so he would appeal to the layperson. He educated students in college on economics and his goal was to make the profession more scientific. He wrote a book that was later described as the most important in which he titled it “Principles of Economics”. He had many economic concepts whom how modern economists still use. Another concept Alfred had was the price elasticity of demand as well as the consumer surplus. Not only did he accomplish all of this but he also introduced the producer surplus too.

The book he wrote named Principles of Economics is where he discussed supply and demand and discussed them as the two blades of scissors that intersect. When you have a product that many people need or want the price will be higher. We cannot survive without food or gasoline; therefore, there is not much we can do about the pricing of them both. We must have them so we must pay for them. Alfred also deserves credit for price elasticity of demand in addition to the creation of the concept of Consumer Surplus. Consumer Surplus is where the price of a commodity is the same however the value to the consumer of the additional unit will decline. Marshall also introduced the concept of producer surplus which is the amount the producer is actually paying minus the amount they would sell the item for.

Although economists have altered the measures since Marshall created them, they still use his basic principles....