Development of Western Economics in the 20th Century

Author: Gao Hongye
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-04-01
Features: In the 20th century, Western economics made significant progress. To illustrate the magnitude of this development, one can compare the early and late periods of the century. In the early part of the century, the University of Cambridge in the UK was the center of Western economics. The renowned British economist Mrs. Robinson once described the state of Western economics at the time in simple terms. She wrote: "When I arrived at Cambridge to study economics in October 1921, Marshall's Principles of Economics was the Bible. Beyond that, we knew very little. Jevons, Cournot, and even Ricardo were figures mentioned only in footnotes. We had heard of Pareto and Cassel, and Owen Fisher represented the United States. As for Austria and Germany, we knew almost nothing. At that time, Marshall was economics."
Marshall's Principles of Economics is 871 pages long and essentially falls within the scope of microeconomics, one of the current branches of Western economics. This book includes more added market types. Microeconomics, represented by Marshall, analyzed two types of markets: perfect competition and monopoly. The former was considered a universal case, while the latter was an exception. However, the reality in the West showed that the universal case was somewhere between the two, leading to the introduction of oligopoly and monopolistic competition market types into traditional microeconomics. Since then, a large amount of literature discussing these market types has emerged. These works, combined with the transaction cost theory of Nobel laureate Coase, have even given rise to a new branch of economics—industrial economics.