Marginal Productivity and the Principle of Variation

Bibliographic Data

ID9727011
AuthorsJohn Hicks (0000-0002-9544-8953, corresponding author), J R Hicks
Year1932
Issue35
Pages79
Publication date1932-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEconomica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-0427 • E-ISSN: 1468-0335
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2548977
OpenAlexW2327314424
LanguageEN
Citations received15

THE various modern versions of the marginal productivity theory are mainly the result of a short period of intense interest in the subject at the close of the last century. During a few years (I889-96), Clark, Marshall, Wicksteed, Wicksell, Walras, Barone and Pareto all wrote about it, each of them propounding original and individually significant views. It might have been thought that after all this attention, the status of the theory would at the end have been firmly established. But this was not the case; serious differences remained unsettled. J. B. Clark, for instance, believed without question that the marginal productivity formula gives a completely satisfactory explanation of the distribution of the Dividend under conditions of static equilibrium; and in this he was followed by others, such as Wicksteed and Wicksell, whose conceptions of the methods of economic analysis differed profoundly from his own. At the other extreme stood Pareto, convinced that the marginal productivity formula is an over-simplification of realitv, and desirous of replacing it by another, even more complicated and unwieldy, into which marginal productivity would fit as a special case.' Marshall, it is fairly clear, stood between these extremes, though inclining to the same side as Pareto. While never convinced that the marginal productivity formula is satisfactory, he seems to have doubted, at least in later years, whether the ground of his opposition was sufficielntly important to deserve much insistence.2 For a long time the division persisted without causing much trouble; but of recent years there has been a revival of interest. Partly this has been due to Professor Cassel's Theory of Social Economy, through which the ideas of Pareto and Walras have become more accessible to the non-mathematical reader. The elaborate but rather inconclusive study of Dr. Valk (The Prin

Econometrics · Economics · Macroeconomics · Marginal product · Marginal utility · Mathematical economics · Microeconomics · Neoclassical economics · Operations management · Opposition (politics) · Pareto principle · Production (economics) · Productivity · Economic theories and models · Economic Theory and Institutions · Economic Theory and Policy · Law

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