ABSTRACT

Following on from the previous discussion we will now consider approaches to production and the firm proposed in the pre-classical, classical and neoclassical periods other than those derived from the division of labour. It will be argued that before the later neoclassical economists no group of writers developed a theory of micro-level production and only Alfred Marshall wrote explicitly on the theory of the firm. Before the neoclassicals the best available theory was one of macro or aggregate production.