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History of Economic Analysis part 99

History of Economic Analysis part 99. At the time of his death in 1950, Joseph Schumpeter-one of the major figures in economics during the first half of the 20th century-was working on his monumental History of Economic Analysis. A complete history of humankind's theoretical efforts to understand economic phenomena from ancient Greece to the present, this book is an important contribution to the history of ideas as well as to economics. | History of economic analysis 942 excellent critical histories permit us to confine ourselves to the most general outlines.10 The chief performance was Cournot s and the period s work may be described as a series of successful attempts to develop his statics of straight monopoly and as another series of much less successful attempts to develop and to correct his theories of oligopoly and bilateral monopoly. Second honors are divided between Marshall and Edgeworth.11 In order to appreciate Cournot s performance it is necessary to recall the fact that as we have noticed not without surprise practically no theory of monopoly had existed before him in spite of all the talk about it and that even his starting point the Marshallian demand function loi du débit had not been properly defined before 1838. Let us first observe that the demand function D F p hence also the total revenue function pF p and the marginal revenue function F p pF p Researches p. 53 are objectively given to the monopolist who on the one hand can exploit a given demand schedule at his pleasure and on the other hand is not supposed to be able to alter it to his advantage for example by advertising or by teaching his customers new uses of his product. For the first time we are thus presented by implication with a definition of monopoly but with one that excludes the large majority of all the single sellers we can observe in real life 2 The given revenue functions Cournot then proceeded to confront with total and marginal cost curves 13 in 10 See e.g. Gaston Leduc Théorie des prix de monopole 1927 the first and third chapters in E.H.Chamberlin sMonopolistic Competition 5th ed. 1946 where the reader also finds an almost complete bibliography F.Zeuthen Problems ofMonopoly and Economic Warfare 1930 H.von Stackelberg Markform und Gleichgewicht 1934 ch. 5 J.R.Hicks The Theory of Monopoly Econometrica January 1935. 11 Walras contribution is insignificant. Along with Cournot we might however have mentioned .