Question

3. Argue the pros and cons of the statement that Alfred Marshall is the progenitor of the standard neoclassical paradigm.

Answer 1

Pros:

Actually allows people to pursue their short-term and long-term interests, financial and otherwise, without being accountable to the metrics and dictates of bureaucrats. Encourages personal responsibility. Promotes the expectation of simple decency, such as paying back one’s debts. Seems to be responsible for most economic growth in the past couple of centuries, though this is the subject of an interesting empirical dispute

Cons:

No false sense of hope for being rescued by the magic of government. It is too easy to be tempted away from principle, so when people start losing as a result of fair competition, natural accident, or unrelated malfeasance, they start to blame the system.