Value, valuation, and price: The interest of Albion W. Small’s sociological work for industrial economics

Industrial economics cannot be solely based on market prices, as this could lead to incorrect academic results and policy recommendations because the prices could provide distorted signals and thus diverge from socially efficient prices. To understand this fundamental principle of price formation in industrial economics, it is necessary to better integrate the social dimension of value and the determination of prices. This paper aims to present the thoughts of an underestimated social scientist from the turn of the nineteenth century, Albion W. Small. Essentially based on Small?s personal archives, our aim is to demonstrate to what extent his vision of the relationship between value, valuation, and price is relevant to industrial economics and to pave the way for new research in this field. Although Small considered that price depends on both the remuneration of factors and the relative scarcity of goods, he also determined that price formation always has a social dimension, which must be considered by economists. JEL classification: A12, B00, D20, D46.