MARSHALL, ALFRED

born July 26, 1842, London, Eng. died July 13, 1924, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire one of the chief founders of the school of English neoclassical economists and first principal of University College, Bristol (187781). Educated at Merchant Taylors' School and at St. John's College, Cambridge, Marshall was a fellow and lecturer in political economy at Balliol College, Oxford, from 1883 to 1885 and professor of political economy at the University of Cambridge from 1885 to 1908. He thereafter devoted himself to his writings. From 1891 to 1894 he was a member of the Royal Commission on Labour. Marshall's magnum opus, Principles of Economics (1890), was his most important contribution to economic literature. It was distinguished by the introduction of a number of new concepts, such as elasticity of demand, consumer's surplus, quasi-rent, and the representative firm, all of which played a major role in the subsequent development of economics. His Industry and Trade (1919) was a study of industrial organization; Money, Credit and Commerce was published in 1923. Writing at a time when the economic world was deeply divided on the theory of value, Marshall succeeded, largely by introducing the element of time as a factor in analysis, in reconciling the classical cost-of-production principle with the marginal-utility principle formulated by William Jevons and the Austrian school. Marshall is often considered to have been in the line of descent of the great English economistsAdam Smith, David Ricardo, and J.S. Mill.