重读“马歇尔冲突”——经济思想史视角的梳理

The Rereading of Marshall Conflict: A Perspective from the History of Economic Thoughts

马歇尔冲突,即规模经济和竞争之间的矛盾,是长期以来困扰经济学界的难题。学界一般认为在马歇尔的体系中,规模经济与竞争之间是冲突的。本文通过区分马歇尔经济学与之后的新古典经济学的不同,对这一命题进行了系统的经济思想史考察。通过回到马歇尔的语境中,考察"规模经济"和"竞争"这两个概念的内涵,可以发现在马歇尔那里,两者是可以兼容的。马歇尔冲突事实上是后来的新古典体系中规模经济与完全竞争之间的冲突。马歇尔对两者关系的处理对实践和经济学下一步的发展是有启示意义的。

Marshall Conflict, the contradiction between scale economy and competition, is a problem troubled the academia for a long time. Scholars generally believe that the confliction exists between scale economy and competition in Marshall's system. By distinguishing the differences between Marshall's economics and subsequent neoclassical economics, this article investigated the proposition from the history of economic thoughts. Tracing the context of Marshall and examining the exact meaning of Marshall's 'scale economy' and 'competition', it can be found that there is no confliction between them. Marshall Conflict actually represents the confliction between the scale economy and perfect competition in neo-classical system. Marshall's handling of them has enlightening significance for both the practice and further development of modern economics.