Biography
Name: William
Stanley Jevons
Birthday: 01st of September 1835 at Liverpool, England
Died: 13th August 1882 at Sussex, England
Known as: English economist and logician
Alma Matter: University
College Landon
Jevons is often credited, along with Carl Menger and Léon Walras, as one of the founders of the Marginal Revolution in economics during the late 19th century. He independently developed the concept of marginal utility, which challenged classical economic theories based on the labour theory of value. Jevons argued that the value of a commodity is determined by the marginal utility, or additional satisfaction, derived from consuming one more unit of that commodity. This revolutionary idea laid the foundation for modern microeconomics and consumer theory.
Jevons also made
significant contributions to the theory of exchange. He explored how
individuals choose how to allocate their resources to maximize utility. His
work on exchange and utility helped develop the concept of the demand curve,
showing how individuals make decisions about consumption based on the
diminishing marginal utility of goods.
In addition to his work
on utility theory, Jevons wrote "The Coal Question" in 1865, where he
discussed the issue of resource depletion, particularly regarding coal, a
crucial energy source at the time. He argued that improving efficiency in coal
consumption would not slow down the depletion of coal reserves but,
paradoxically, might increase consumption due to reduced costs.
Jevons' ideas had a
profound influence on the development of neoclassical economics, which emerged
as a dominant school of thought in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His
work paved the way for economists like Alfred Marshall and Vilfredo Pareto to
further refine and expand neoclassical economic thought.
Written By
D.S.Deeptha Fernando
References
PART
THREE Neoclassical Economic Thought and Its Critics
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