IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cwl/cwldpp/1615.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Marshall's Theory of Value and the Strong Law of Demand

Author

Listed:

Abstract

We show that all the fundamental properties of competitive equilibrium in Marshall's theory of value, as presented in Note XXI of the mathematical appendix to his Principles of Economics (1890), derive from the Strong Law of Demand. This is, existence, uniqueness, optimality, global stability of equilibrium prices with respect to tantonnement price adjustment and refutability follow from the cyclical monotonicity of the market demand function in the Marshallian general equilibrium model.

Suggested Citation

  • Donald J. Brown & Caterina Calsamiglia, 2007. "Marshall's Theory of Value and the Strong Law of Demand," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1615, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    • Handle: RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1615
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/pub/d16/d1615.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John K.-H. Quah, 2000. "The Monotonicity of Individual and Market Demand," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(4), pages 911-930, July.
    2. Hildenbrand, Werner, 1983. "On the "Law of Demand."," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(4), pages 997-1019, July.
    3. Donald Brown & Caterina Calsamiglia, 2007. "The Nonparametric Approach to Applied Welfare Analysis," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 31(1), pages 183-188, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Donald J. Brown & Caterina Calsamiglia, 2014. "Alfred Marshall’s cardinal theory of value: the strong law of demand," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 2(1), pages 65-76, April.
    2. Roy Allen, 2019. "Injectivity and the Law of Demand," Papers 1908.05714, arXiv.org.
    3. Gaël GIRAUD & Isabelle MARET, 2005. "The Exact Insensitivity of Market Budget Shares and the 'Balancing Effect'," Working Papers of BETA 2005-02, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    4. John Quah, 2001. "Comparative Statics of the Weak Axiom," Economics Papers 2001-W3, Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
    5. Larsson, Lars-Göran, 2012. "On Expected Demand Functions without Utility Maximization," Working Papers in Economics 527, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    6. Michael Jerison & John K.-H. Quah, 2006. "Law of Demand," Discussion Papers 06-07, University at Albany, SUNY, Department of Economics.
    7. Larsson, Lars-Göran, 2009. "On the Law of Demand. - A mathematically simple descriptive approach for general probability density functions," Working Papers in Economics 396, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    8. Michael Jerison, 2001. "Demand Dispersion, Metonymy and Ideal Panel Data," Discussion Papers 01-11, University at Albany, SUNY, Department of Economics.
    9. Gaël Giraud & Isabelle Maret, 2007. "The Exact Insensitivity of Market Budget Shares and the "Balancing Effect"," Working Papers halshs-00155753, HAL.
    10. Larsson, Lars-Göran, 2010. "General Properties of Expected Demand Functions: Negativity (No Giffen Good) and Homogeneity - A Descriptive Non Utility Maximizing Approach," Working Papers in Economics 469, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    11. John Quah, 2004. "The aggregate weak axiom in a financial economy through dominant substitution effects," Economics Papers 2004-W18, Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
    12. Junichi Minagawa & Thorsten Upmann, 2019. "Price Effects on Compound Commodities," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 121(2), pages 630-646, April.
    13. Mervyn Allister King, 1993. "Debt Deflation: Theory and Evidence," FMG Discussion Papers dp175, Financial Markets Group.
    14. Lilia Maliar & Serguei Maliar, 2005. "An Analytical Construction Of Constantinides¿ Social Utility Function," Working Papers. Serie AD 2005-25, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    15. Cheng, John Q & Wellman, Michael P, 1998. "The WALRAS Algorithm: A Convergent Distributed Implementation of General Equilibrium Outcomes," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 12(1), pages 1-24, August.
    16. Yakar Kannai & Larry Selden, 2014. "Violation of the Law of Demand," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 55(1), pages 1-28, January.
    17. Laurens CHERCHYE & Thomas DEMUYNCK & Bram DE ROCK, 2010. "Noncooperative household consumption with caring," Working Papers of Department of Economics, Leuven ces10.34, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Economics, Leuven.
    18. Donald J. Brown & Chris Shannon, 2000. "Uniqueness, Stability, and Comparative Statics in Rationalizable Walrasian Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(6), pages 1529-1540, November.
    19. John Chipman, 2006. "Pareto and contemporary economic theory," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 53(4), pages 451-475, December.
    20. Laurens CHERCHYE & Ian CRAWFORD & Bram DE ROCK & Frederic VERMEULEN, 2011. "Aggregation without the aggravation? Nonparametric analysis of the representative consumer," Working Papers of Department of Economics, Leuven ces11.36, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Economics, Leuven.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Partial equilibrium analysis; Short run equilibrium; Strong law of demand; Cyclical monotonicity; Legendre-Frenchel duality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B13 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925 - - - Neoclassical through 1925 (Austrian, Marshallian, Walrasian, Wicksellian)
    • C62 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Existence and Stability Conditions of Equilibrium
    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • D51 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Exchange and Production Economies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1615. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Brittany Ladd (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cowleus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.