Marginal Revolution Research Articles

Understanding Man in the Modern Academic Philospohy after the Marginalist Revolution

Understanding Man in the Modern Academic Philospohy after the Marginalist Revolution

From Classical Political Economics to Neoclassical (Mainstream) Economics: The Ideological Reproduction and Depoliticization Process of Economics

The first school of thought that allowed economics to be treated as a separate discipline was classical economics, known as classical political economy. Classical economics is described as the science of distribution. However, the extent to which science prioritises distributional dynamics is debatable. On the other hand, after the marginalist revolution in the 1870s, the birth of neoclassical economics led to the separation of economics from social sciences. Pure economic logic has separated the economy from society, politics, and all kinds of social factors and put it into positive sciences that operate with an autonomous mechanism within itself. In this way, it is thought that it is aimed to exclude the secrets that can question the structural depth and distribution dynamics of the capitalist system. In all these contexts, the ideological-based reproduction and depoliticisation process of classical and neoclassical economics will be discussed within a historical materialist framework. Thus, it is thought that it will be possible to reveal the theoretical and ideological realities behind the visible faces of classical economics, characterised as classical political economy and neoclassical economics, known as mainstream economics.

Abstracción e idealización del homo economicus: la formación de la noción neoclásica de agente racional

The article presents a historical reconstruction of homo economicus. The aim is to show how the notion of agent went from being a holistic abstraction in Adam Smith to an idealizing abstraction where some features of the human being are simplified and exaggerated. To this end, the notion of agent in Smith is reconstructed and then it is shown how in the works of John Stuart Mill, the marginalist revolution, perfect competition, an increasingly idealized notion of agent was formed which, already in the expected utility model, ceased to represent human beings. The text shows how this growing idealization was linked to the process of mathematization of economics. Fi-nally, some epistemological advantages and disadvantages of the neoclassical notion of the rational agent are discussed.

The Human Economic Model in the Context of a Systematic Approach to the Study of Economics

The purpose of the article is to identify the conceptual features of human economic models that determine the uniqueness of the construction of alternative approaches, as well as the possibility of transition to a more realistic model. The methodology of the research is determined by the fact that the economy as a complex system has a special type of properties of elements and their relationships associated with its intersubjective and dualistic nature. The article shows that modern approaches that generate fragmented theoretical descriptions have developed on the basis of reliance on different versions of the standard (basic) model of behavior of economic entities that arose during the marginalist revolution. In this model, economic motives are interpreted (explicitly or implicitly) based on utilitarian ethics, which creates the need to consider the behavior and interaction of subjects in the context of the exogenous influence of non-economic factors. The construction of unorthodox theories is based on the socio-cultural model of man proposed by the historical school, and provides for the study of three levels of economic reality. At the deep level, based on the consideration of value-normative representations and interactions of actors, the specifics of the formation of the institutional system of the economy are substantiated; at the middle level, with the help of institutional and instrumental analysis, the behavior of different groups of its subjects is described, taking into account their positions; based on this, the processes occurring at the surface level are explained. Mainstream theories, relying on the institutional model of a person, use institutional and instrumental analysis to describe the average and superficial levels of reality, which is accompanied by borrowing the ideas of the classical and German schools, as well as unorthodox institutionalism. The paper proposes to abandon simplified interpretations of the classical theory and, in line with its ideas, move from the standard model to the economic and cultural model of a person, taking into account the dualism of his economic motives. This perspective focuses on the creation of a system paradigm adequate to the modern economy for studying the endogenous processes of its transformation and the formation of mechanisms for the successful sovereign development of the national economy.

Two currencies – Rethinking energy and the economy

Beginning with the marginalist revolution of the late nineteenth century, neoclassical economic theory developed by borrowing mathematical constructs from physics, but not the physics itself. Several scholars, including early ecological economists, recognized there was a need to incorporate energy and other resources into economic theory. In recent decades there have been attempts to fuse energy into aggregate neoclassical production functions, but these suffer from several challenges: they do not hold at an aggregate level; do not capture the dynamic evolution of the economy; ignore the universal flow of energy through all of the economy; and there is interdependency between variables. These challenges are largely addressed by energy-linked computable general equilibrium models, although their model formulations still understate the role of energy as the lifeblood of economies.Here I argue that the economy can simultaneously be studied in terms of physical units and monetary units. I contrast physical science and social science views on energy in economies, and demonstrate how thermodynamics and value theory can be used harmoniously with an example of the energy basis to capital formation in the United States. When used to study major transformation of energy systems, equations, or metrics, are required for each type of energy carrier in the economy.

Маржиналистская теория юридической ответственности О.У. Холмса

Marginalism is a doctrine in economics that applies methods of analysis based on operating with ‘marginal’, that is, incremental values. Evaluation is carried out in terms of the impact that a change in a certain value has on the level of utility or other significant category. In the 1870s, a ‘marginal revolution’ took place in economics. A little later, a marginal revolution is also taking place in legal theory. Deterrence from committing crimes becomes the main goal of bringing to legal liability. Punishment (legal liability) is necessary only to stop the lawful behavior, despite the fact that it is to be assessed how a change in the measure of liability by a certain amount affects the change in the level of illegal behavior. O.W. Holmes jr., especially in the works ‘The Common Law’ and ‘The Path of the Law’, begins to use marginal values for the analysis of law. With this in mind, this article analyzes the marginalist aspect of O.W. Holmes’ legal thought.

Системная парадигма и разработка альтернативных стратегий построения институциональных экономических теорий

This article addresses the key aspects of constructing contemporary theories in institutional economics. The goal is to uncover the paradigmatic framework guiding different strategies in institutional theo­ries and their potential for change. Using interdisciplinary constructivist methods from social sciences, the study highlights the intersubjective nature of economics and contrasts the principles that serve as the foundation for the development of institutional economic theories. The study’s historical review shows that shared research strategies have emerged from a paradigm rooted in the marginalist revolution. In this approach, collective phenomena explain the behavior of agents pursuing utilitarian motives. The unorthodox strategy involves constructing macro-, micro-, and historical-economic theories based on the distinction of two main levels of research: value-normative and institutional-instrumental. Meanwhile, the mainstream strategy concentrates only on institutions and tools. Relying on the established paradigm results in the creation of structuralist and eclectic theories that lead to a fragmented view of the economy. The paper advocates a transition to a poststructura­list paradigm via constructivist logic. This shift entails examining the relationship between agents and institutions from the perspective of economic culture, values, and ideas, rather than psychology. This approach enables a multi-level assessment of the economy as a system of institutions forged through value compromise. It also allows us to show internal changes, considering the impact of path determinacy linked to new values and ideas (ideational path determinacy).

Three Sources and Three Heroes of the Marginal Revolution

Three Sources and Three Heroes of the Marginal Revolution

The Marginalist Revolution: An event, a process or a myth?

The Marginalist Revolution, which is traditionally associated with the date 1871 and the names of Leon Walras, William Stanley Jevons, Karl Menger, is interpreted as a complex and lengthy process, that ended around the mid-twentieth century. Its origins can be traced to three relatively independent trends that existed long before the 1870s: in the field of value theory — a tendency to view utility as a basis of value, in the field of methodology — a trend towards the adoption of deductive method, in the field of analytical tools — a trend towards the application of mathematics in economics. The achievements of these authors, which in a sense can be regarded as a “point of intersection” (“overlap”) of the above-mentioned tendencies, were not properly appreciated by contemporaries, were not considered as revolutionary and for quite a long time remained on the periphery of economic research, became a bridge to the future economic science.

Menger and contemporary Austrian economics: knowledge, institutions and liberalism

Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics was published in 1871, and was a central text in the marginalist revolution in economic theory. From the beginning, however, it was recognised that Menger’s “Austrian” brand of neoclassical economics stood out from the contributions of Jevons and Walras in the marginal revolution due to his emphasis on subjectivism, price formation through bargaining and exchange, the passage of time in production and exchange activity, and the evolution of institutions in addition to the focus on choice against constraints. In this paper, I attempt to trace out Menger’s continuing influence on the contemporary Austrian School of economics in terms of methodology, analytical economics, and social philosophy.

Three sources and three heroes of the Marginal Revolution

The article is devoted to the 150th anniversary of Marginal Revolution and deals with “patristic legacies” leading to the works of William Stanley Jevons, Carl Menger and Léon Walras. The British empiricist-utilitarian tradition which inspired Jevons, the German subjectivist tradition culminating in the work of Menger, and the French Cartesian tradition, the traits of which can be easily seen in Walras, happened to give birth to similar theories of value and price based on marginal utility. All three also contributed to the creation of exact economic science. But the forms their theories took, as well as the policies they recommended, were very different and this difference could be explained by the different, nationally specific sources of their thought.

MONEY AND CAPITAL IN THE CONCEPTS OF W. ST. JEVONS AND C. MENGER

The article analyzes the approaches of Carl Menger and William Stanley Jevons - two authors of the marginalist revolution - to the interpretation of the most important economic concepts - money and capital. They share the evolutionary explanation of the origin of money and similarly understanding their essence, but they emphasize the different basic functions of money. It gives the different shade to the nature of the value of money in their conceptions on money. The positions of the authors on the reasons for the dynamics of the value of money and on recommendations regarding monetary policy are again converging. The authors’ interpretation of capital as a homogeneous fund for generating future income is also similar. At once, Jevons accents emphasis on the function of capital as providing for the current needs of workers, and Menger on the subjectivity of placing any type of capital goods in one or another production chain depending on the individual's needs.

Paradigmatic features of the development of institutional strategies for studying modern economy

The article shows the limitations of the strategies for studying institutional economics, which have developed as a result of both the marginalist revolution and the emergence of the generally accepted dualistic paradigm. Within the framework of this paradigm, competing strategies actually use the utilitarian interpretation of economic motives for the economic actors' behavior as a “hard core”, and social phenomena as exogenous variables, by which different explanatory patterns of economic behavior are created. In the article the peculiarities of the development of a research paradigm are considered, that makes it possible to study the endogenous mechanisms of the development of a modern economy on the basis of an institutional approach.

Distinguished fellow lecture: a journey with the catallactists

ABSTRACT This lecture examines the nature of the changing focus of economics during the 19th century, which is often referred to as the ‘marginal revolution’. The change is characterised as a focus on the theory of exchange, and the beginnings of welfare economics. Attention is given to early contributions by J.S. Mill, Cournot, and Whewell, and the ‘neoclassical economists, Jevons, Marshall, Walras and Edgeworth.

Gender apartheid: The challenges of breaking into “man's world”

AbstractDrawing on feminist/gender theory and the notion that women self‐allocate to occupations with which they identify, this study examines the challenges confronted by women working in male‐dominated occupations in a highly patriarchal setting. The findings reveal that women working in “male‐typed” occupations in Nigeria are “lone wolves” in a marginal revolution. They experience social ostracism, impaired spousal relationships, and a lack of support from friends and family. Furthermore, the entrenchment of patriarchal culture, the requirement of physical strength, and the lack of trust on the part of clients pose significant barriers to their success in male‐dominated professions. These problems further breed and reinforce occupational gender segregation. The prospects of reducing occupational gender segregation and the underrepresentation of women in “male‐typed” occupations appear slim due to cultural beliefs and the patriarchal orientation in the study context.

The discontinuity between value and price form: tracking the subtraction of the qualitative

Ruptures represent the pertinent cause of scientific progress. On the one hand, such “scientific breaks” demarcate one type of scientific discourse from another, while simultaneously always putting in place some specific ideological aspect of the science in question. They consequently suture a determinate scientific totality, one that always reflects and serves the ruling class—be it a worldview or a concrete research programme. The article will attempt to trace the notion of value in different economic discourses to outline the historical discontinuities between them. The subsequent aim is to explore the genealogy of quantitative and qualitative determinations of value (ranging from Smith and Ricardo, through Marx, all the way to the marginalists). We will do this by highlighting a shift in the methodological approach of the object of knowledge—a parallax shift of object—i.e. between the positivist and dialectical grounding of notions. In the first part, the paper tracks the impasses arising from the move to mathematized economics via a “marginalist revolution”. In the second and third part, it proceeds with examining the rupture in “objective” and “subjective” aspects of value, reviewing different positions from Marx’s value form (as sensuous–supersensuous thing) and A. Amonn’s compromise based on the “social” form to F. A. von Hayek’s and mainstream economics’ embrace of the price form. The article concludes with a reaffirmation of Marx’s critique of the specific structure of the capitalist mode of production, one in which the subtraction of the abstract/general (“Real abstraction”) is central to a synchronous structure of economic categories. It remains the only genuine critical assessment of such a rupture within the domain of economic scientific strata.

Economic history into the perspective of economic thought and historiography: Between the Symplegade Manolis Manioudis

The relation between economic theory and history, as is crystallised in the history of economic thought, determined the evolution of economic history proper. The twin events of the Marginalist Revolution and the Methodenstreit were crucial in exiling history from economic theory. Moreover, the dominance of the narrative historiographical paradigm in historiography, till the first decades of the twentieth century, determined the absence of theory from economic history. This twofold hiatus is decisive in the short history of economic history. This paper attempts to delineate this gap by showing that an organic symphysis between economic theory and history is indispensable in the understanding economic phenomena.

РОЗВИТОК ІДЕЙ МАРЖИНАЛІЗМУ ТА ЇХ ВІДОБРАЖЕННЯ У ВІТЧИЗНЯНІЙ ЕКОНОМІЧНІЙ ДУМЦІ

In the conditions of transformational shifts and construction of the national competitive economy of Ukraine, society is a particularly attractive object for socio-economic research. The necessity of deep theoretical comprehension of the processes that take place and determination of the directions of further development of the domestic economy through the reference to the historical experience of studying market transformations by domestic economists is substantiated. There is a tendency of revival of scientific interest in historical and economic research in modern economic theory, where Ukrainian economic thought opens a wide field for scientific research. The aim of the article is to study the development of the ideas of marginalism and their reflection in the domestic economic thought in the works of representatives of the Kyiv School of Economics. The article presents the evolution of the theoretical and methodological foundations of the stages of the marginal revolution. It is noted that in Ukraine there were also powerful scientific centers of marginal orientation. It is claimed that the Kyiv School of Economics, headed by M. H. Bunge and D. I. Pikhno, initiated the subjective-psychological direction of political economy in Ukraine. It is determined that the peculiarity of O. Bilimovich's scientific thought was the complete denial of the labor theory of value. The article states that MI Tugan-Baranovsky has the primacy in the deep substantiation and creation of the synthesis of the labor theory of value and theories of marginal utility. It is noted that the combination of objective and subjective approaches on a methodological basis allowed him to avoid one-sided economic research. It is emphasized that the views of M. Tugan-Baranovsky in this problem were characterized by both undeniably powerful and theoretically weak aspects. Based on the study, it was concluded that marginalism as a powerful direction in the development of world economic theory had its own peculiarities of perception and development in Ukrainian economic thought of the second half of the nineteenth - early twentieth century. Research has revealed a critical perception of methodological individualism as a characteristic feature of the scientific tools of marginalism. It is noted that the fundamental ideas of marginalism in the Ukrainian economic thought of the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries. combined with the methods of the new historical and social schools. The article notes that at that time Ukrainian scientists took into account the influence of non-economic factors on the economic behavior of economic entities,

Comparing Old and New Partial Derivative Estimates from Nonlinear Nonparametric Regressions

Partial derivatives have a special place in economics since the marginal revolution of the 1850s. We present results from multivariate partial derivative estimates using nonlinear non-parametric regressions in a finite difference method, accessible via the R-package NNS. Numerical partial derivatives are notoriously unstable, but NNS always correctly estimates their sign and comes closest to the correct magnitude compared to the coefficients in multiple linear regressions, and compared to the gradients from the popular np package for non-parametric kernel regressions.

Post Otistik İktisat Hareketi: Eleştirel Bir Yaklaşım

Neoclassical economics theory which resulted in a marginalist revolution is in a position to dominate in economics education and economics studies being of American capitalism. Philosophical and ideological acceptances of the main stream economics have taken its effect up to Nobel Economics Prizes from policies of The World Bank and The International Monetary Fund. The main stream economics in economic education field teaches as dictate itself ideological and philosophical theories. Therefore the main stream economics has isolated through  economics social sciences like schools of economic thought, history, political sciences, sociology, psychology. Within this scope, pluralism problem and theory remote from real life, increasing mathematics use in economics has led to the rise in ciriticism against the main stream economics. This ciriticism became organized with Post Autistic Economics Movement as a result of a notice prepared by students in France in 2000. The movement criticized diversely the main stream economics and has been expanded to world. The movement has been thought up to country that it showed up from title used. This study has been mentioned from Neoclassical economics theory, criticism against Neoclassical economics, Post Autistic Economics Movement, policies of The IMF and The World Bank, Nobel Economics Prizes. In this study has also been mentioned from inequality, inequality in income distribution that the main stream economics took place with policies The IMF and The World Bank. In study has been dwelt on that mathematics became an aim for economics.