Britain’s Industrial Evolution: The Structuring Role of Economic Theory

We trace the coevolution of industrial organization and the ideas and policies that have influenced Britain’s industrial development from Alfred Marshall’s pioneering work on the English industrial districts to the present. Then, we examine four contemporary districts — in footwear, motorsport, sparkling wine, and cyber security — that are internationally competitive, despite decades of ill-informed policy choices, if not neglect. We also investigate the case of British elite sport as a high-performance industrial cluster with potentially transferrable institutional arrangements, particularly with regard to the nature and role of the strategic lead body and the state, as well as relationships within the system. We conclude that Marshall’s methodological and theoretical approach to understanding industrial organization — and his belief that industrial districts would coexist with other forms of industrial organization (rather than be superseded by them) — helps to explain the dynamism of contemporary British industrial districts, with important implications for Britain’s industrial revitalization.     

国外产业集群研究走势

从19世纪末马歇尔研究产业区,到1970年代末别卡提尼研究新产业区,至1990年波特正式提出产业集群,国外产业集聚研究跨入新的研究阶段。波特产业集群的观点,已经成为企业和政府思考经济、评估地区的竞争优势和制定公共政策的一种新方式。同时,国外初步形成新产业区学派、区域创新网络学派、新经济地理学派及战略管理学派等四大流派和四种分析模型。研究走势表明,产业集群理论已经引起发达国家高度重视,集群效应全球化更加明显;产业集群良好的发展机制成为其进一步发展的强大动力;产业集群已经成为一种充满活力的区域发展模式。     

P.W.S. Andrews' Manufacturing Business Revisited

P.W.S. Andrews (1914–1971) was a remarkable industrial economist at Oxford University, prominently as a member of the Oxford Economists’ Research Group (OERG) and Nuffield College. In the final few years of his life, he held a professorship at Lancaster University. As a self-described ‘practical theorist’, Andrews thought economists, particularly in the 1930s, inappropriately extended Marshall in a more formal, technical manner whereby the detailed reality of industrial economics was overshadowed. Such a ‘methodological mistake’ of a priori reasoning trumping the inductive method was countered by the OERG’s emphasis on grounded empiricism featuring extensive primary research on real businesses. A product of this research was Andrews’ Manufacturing Business that proffers a novel theory of the business firm. This article revisits Andrews’ signature book, paying particular attention to its apparent curiously harsh reviews by Austin Robinson and Arnold Plant, two distinguished Marshallian industrial economists. Moreover, Manufacturing Business is considered as a possible precursor of business strategy, a nascent discipline in the 1960s.     

The Santa Fe approach to complexity: a Marshallian evaluation

The paper examines the characteristics of the ‘Santa Fe approach’ (hereafter SFA) to complexity and attempts its evaluation in terms of the Marshallian intellectual tradition. The paper is organised into three parts. The first part outlines the main features of the SFA The second describes Marshall’s views on complexity and his appeal to common sense as a way to apply economic reasoning (on complex systems) in practice. The last part argues that Marshall’s views on complexity, rather than just being a historical precedent for the SFA, consist in an original illustration of the role of judgement in the use of economic theory.     

Sraffa,interdependence and demand: the Gramscian influence

The influence of Sraffa' early commitments to Gramscian Marxism on his subsequent economic analysis have been little investigated by Sraffa scholars. The discussion here argues for a philosophical connection. Specifically, it is argued that organicist ideas found their way into Sraffa's thinking about interdependence in his 1926 critique of Marshall, in his reported critique of Wittgenstein's early philosophy, and in his 1960 Production of commodities. In each instance, atomist views were challenged in an understanding of agent or sectoral interdependence that made use a single criterion for agent or sectoral autonomy: that such autonomy depends upon the fulfilment of identify conditions for the individuation of autonomous agents or sectors. It is suggested that Sraffa's thinking in this regard ses the attempted fulfilment of these conditions in neoclassical theory as self-contradictory, thus allowing the characterization of his thinking as a form of impossibility logic. This impossibility logic is contrasted to that of Arrow, in order to advance general propositions about Sraffa's understanding of demand.     

Alfred Marshall and François Perroux: the neglected liaison*

The richness François Perroux's economic theories have allowed the literature to highlight several connections between him and other authors. Among the names mentioned in the literature, one economist is conspicuous by his absence: Alfred Marshall. However, the relations between Marshall and Perroux are manifold and are far from accidental: not only because Perroux was a careful reader of Marshall but also and moreover because they both have an important common ground, which affected their perspectives. The main aim of this paper is to inquire into the aspects that characterise Marshall's and Perroux's approaches, stressing their affinities and underlining their common roots.     

知识溢出理论的研究进展与述评

知识溢出的提出最早可以追溯到Marshall对外部性的讨论,自新经济地理理论以来,知识溢出更成为了近年来研究区域经济学增长、产业集群创新等领域不可缺少的变量。首先,通过回顾国内外学者对知识溢出的研究,发现知识的非竞争性和部分排他性是知识溢出现象发生的根本原因,产业内知识溢出和产业间知识溢出在产业发展的不同阶段具有程度各异的影响;其次,因地理距离和社会距离的存在,限制了局部区域知识的外溢,知识溢出具有空间局域性特征。在一定范围内,人力资本流动、商品贸易、FDI、合作研发、非正式交流等活动均成为了知识溢出的途径。尽管知识溢出是无意识的行为,但知识在流动中留下了可追溯的痕迹,并可通过知识生产函数法、专利引用文献法、C-H模型进行测量。最后,文中还展望了知识溢出在解释企业创新决策行为、产业集群创新、区域经济增长等方面的应用,并指出下一个研究方向。     

工业大数据时代技术示能性研究综述与未来展望

近10年内,国外逐渐形成了技术示能性理论,为工业4.0背景下企业如何有效利用新一代信息技术提供了系统分析框架,已成为管理信息系统和组织行为领域的研究热点。但国内相关研究尚处于起步阶段,并未对技术示能性研究前沿形成全面的逻辑体系。鉴于此,对国外技术示能性相关研究进行梳理,分析其引入组织管理的过程,从形成因素、实现过程和影响结果3个方面解析概念内涵,并在此基础上构建第四次工业革命核心生产要素——工业大数据驱动的技术示能性理论模型,展望其未来研究方向。结论进一步丰富了新工业革命情景下的技术示能性理论,可为企业有效利用工业大数据实现智能生产提供指导,对中国传统制造业实现工业化与信息化深度融合、推进中国制造2025具有重要实践指导意义。     

Management and the representative firm revisited: the modern significance of Marshall's evolutionary economics

In an essay written in honour of Peter Swann, it is second nature to discuss some aspects of the economics of innovation, as that is the very challenging area of economic life where he has added so much to our understanding. I will attempt to do this by posing the problem of how innovation fits into the theory of value. Innovation research continues apace, but its broader systemic implications for how we understand the dynamics of capitalism are in danger of being overlooked. But two important economists, Schumpeter and Marshall, have seen the problem differently and built innovation into their theoretical schemes from the start. Marshall's theory of evolutionary change provides a natural focus for our discussion, and this is reflected in his treatment of management, in his use of the representative firm and in the variation-cum-selection dynamics of his open competitive process. We treat each of these topics and show how his evolutionary dynamics can be expressed in the Fisher/Price dynamics of evolutionary change. More generally, the key to economic development is the uneven nature of innovation and it is the uneven nature that gives economic transformation its evolutionary character. This, I suggest, is the proper legacy of Marshalls economics.     

Missing links in Marshall's early thoughts on education

Over the period 1867?-?73 Marshall integrated his thoughts on education reform with his work on psychology, and then economics. Around 1872, when the static method proved problematic with regard to long-term wage differentials, Marshall took his developing position concerning education and incorporated it into his emerging vision of political economy, the result being the germ of much of Book IV of the Principles. In addition, looking at Marshall's early study of psychology in conjunction with his writings on education provides further reason to doubt that Marshall ever embraced a wholly materialist philosophy.     

分工思想何以被忽视 ——以马歇尔为中心的思想史考察

分工思想是古典经济学的重要组成部分，但在马歇尔之后的新古典经济学中却一度被忽视。其缘由何在？本文以马歇尔为中心，做了思想史的考察。发现马歇尔的分工思想内含于对组织的分析中，这一分析采用了生物类比的方法。该方法与经济力学方法的兼容性是有争议的，这引发了20世纪20-30年代有关“报酬递增与代表性企业”的争论，使主流经济学走向了“去经济生物学，近经济力学”这一背离马歇尔思想的道路，这是分工思想被忽视的重要原因。     

Sraffa and the Marshallian tradition*

Abstract

The paper retraces some of the stages in Sraffa's thinking about the work of Marshall, by drawing on unpublished material in the Sraffa archive from 1923 to 1930. It argues that Sraffa transformed his dissent – which was based on ideological grounds – into a ‘quest for the fatal error’ to demolish the logical construction of Marshallian theory. Some of his attacks were successful (for example, the critique of the relation between costs and output); other attempts failed (the critique of the ‘normal rate of profit’ and the critique of the concept of marginal productivity) since Sraffa could not find enough textual evidence to support his position.     

Firm ownership,industrial structure,and regional innovation performance in China's provinces

This paper uses panel data between 2000 and 2010 to explore how firm ownership and regional industrial structures contribute to regional innovation performance in Chinese provinces. Specifically, we explore how the extent of specialisation and diversification in regional industrial structures at the province level fosters both Marshall–Arrow–Romer and Jacobs spillovers, as well as how foreign and state ownership influence regional innovation. We find: (i) China's regional innovation systems benefit from Jacobs but not MAR externalities, with the former spurring higher quality innovation in the form of increased invention patenting; (ii) state-owned enterprises and foreign-invested enterprises advance local innovation, with the latter again fostering higher quality innovation; and (iii) a convergence towards a combination of low specialisation and high diversity in provincial industrial structure is taking place between China's more developed inland coastal provinces and less developed inland provinces. Implications and suggestions for policy-making and future research are discussed.     

Average cost and marginal cost pricing in Marshall: Textual analysis and interpretation

Abstract

This paper proposes a textual analysis of Marshall's theory of firm pricing behavior under competitive conditions. Average cost and marginal cost pricing theories have very distinct origins as they are rooted, respectively, in the classical and marginalistic theory of competition. I analyze to what extent and under which circumstances the two theories joined in the work of Alfred Marshall; and I argue that, even though only partial evidence can be found to support the adoption of the notion of marginal cost pricing by Marshall, he developed some concepts, such as the distinction between short and long periods and the notion of quasi-rents, which turned out to be fundamental for the joint acceptance of marginal cost and average cost pricing principles by the Marshallian school.     

MARSHALL'S INDUSTRIAL ANALYSIS

My confidence in Cournot as an economist was shaken when I found that his mathematics re I[ncreasing] R[eturns] led inevitably to things which do not exist and have no near relation to reality. One of the chief purposes of my Wander-jahre among factories, etc., was to discover how Cournot's premises were wrong. The chief outcome of my work in this direction, which occupied me a good deal between 1870 and 1890, is in the 'Representative firm' theory,.the supplementary cost analysis,.as well as the parts [of the Principles ] that directly relate to supply price for I. R. Marshall to A. W. Flux, 7 March, 1898, in Memorials , (1872–1923), pp. 406–7     

分工理论：从古希腊思想到新国际体系的研究述评

分工思想最早可以追溯到古希腊时期的柏拉图,古典经济学时期亚当.斯密第一次从经济学意义上对分工进行了系统的论述,新古典经济学时期的马歇尔用规模经济概念替代了专业化经济概念,同时期的马克思对分工与协作进行了较为深刻的研究。自19世纪末马歇尔对资源配置问题重视以来,分工问题就逐渐被主流经济学所忽视,经济学的研究重心转向资源配置问题。随后,杨格（1928）指出马歇尔的替代是个错误,但直到20世纪50年代,随着产业组织和经济增长理论的发展,经济学家们才再次认识到分工的重要意义。20世纪80年代以来,以杨小凯为代表的新兴古典经济学家,用现代分析方法分析了分工问题。进入20世纪90年代,针对新的分工及贸易现实,一些学者对产品内国际分工理论（垂直解体）进行了深入探讨。     

Alfred Marshall's critical analysis of scientific management∗

Abstract

In Industry and Trade, ‘A study of industrial technique and business organization; and of their influences on the conditions of various classes and nations’ (1919), Alfred Marshall develops a detailed analysis of scientific management, emphasizing not only its unquestionable advantages but also its dangerous limits. Although in the literature Marshall's evaluation of scientific management has been considered rather positive, the author has found it sceptical and definitively critical in many passages of his book. This paper deals with Marshall's analysis in order to underline the reasons why he criticizes Taylor's system, which, at that time, sounded like the greatest expression of modernity.     

Platforms and Real Options in Industrial Organization

We need a robust theory to analyse the dynamics of new industrial organizations that are being created by the explosion of information technology. This paper sets out a new theoretical perspective and suggests a new empirical framework towards formulating such a theory. The new conceptual tools of analysis presented here include the "platform" as a key element of new market structures, "real options" analysis to deal with genuine uncertainty, and an understanding of a new form of competition that takes place among different platforms.
JEL Classification Numbers: L10, L12, L15, D81.     

Progress beyond growth: Some insights from Marshall's final book

Alfred Marshall had a very challenging project to write a treatise in two or more volumes that could contain his main interests and reflections. Instead of that treatise, Marshall published three books (Principles of Economics, Industry and Trade and Money Credit and Commerce). They cover only in part the ground that the treatise should have contained. That is why Marshall went on with the idea of publishing another final book. In this paper, we give a brief summary of the structure and the contents of this book, focusing more in detail on some subjects particularly interesting and meaningful.     

论产业结构合理化

在我国,长期以来对产业结构合理化的研究大多局限于定性研究,这对指导我国产业结构合理化调整缺乏可操作性。文章试图从定量的角度对产业结构合理化做一初步的尝试,在定量分析方面做出开创性工作。作者根据马克思的各产业资本收益率具有平均化趋势的理论,建立了自己的模型。并利用该模型构造出对中国当前的产业结构进行分析的框架,为创新中国产业结构合理化调整的研究做出贡献。