This study examines the influence of Ricardo’s political economy on Marshall’s economics. According to J. M. Keynes, Marshall consistently attempted to find continuity with Ricardo’s positions. However, such a solid theoretical relationship between Marshall and Ricardo cannot be confirmed before 1879, which is when Marshall proposed a new designation, namely Economics, to substitute political economy. Marshall studied political economy from 1867–1879. His lecture notes and journal articles in 1873 and 1874 suggested the use of abstraction as a scientific method and referenced J. S. Mill’s book to emphasise the separation of scientific analysis from moral judgement. As previous studies have also identified, there are no manuscripts showing that the young Marshall was directly influenced by Ricardo’s political economy. After 1879, Marshall apparently evaluated Ricardo’s political economy. In particular, Oxford Idealists such as Arnold Toynbee gave Marshall an opportunity to consider Ricardo’s political economy. He regarded Ricardo’s deductive model highly based on what he described as a ‘strong case’. Further, Marshall’s critical consideration of Ricardo’s political economy led him to develop an economic analysis method that assumes the pliability of human nature. In this regard, unlike contemporary economists, Marshall became oriented toward an evolutionary analytical framework centred on the development of human nature in complex economic phenomena. As he became a professor of political economy at Cambridge, Marshall aimed to develop Economics as a branch of science that considers the relationship between theory and reality through his examination of Ricardo’s political economy. Contrary to Marshall’s intention, however, the future generation of economists has followed the direction indicated by Jevons, who suggested mathematisation as the science of economics.

Although local-level neoliberalism has garnered attention in recent years, insufficient research has resulted in a lack of clarity regarding the history of neoliberalism in Japan. This study examines the relationship between Japan and the rise of neoliberalism during the Interwar Period (the 1920s and the 1930s). This study adopts a sociohistorical method, focusing on international human networks, which has been used extensively in recent neoliberal studies. It examines Jiyū tsūshō kyōkai (the Association for Liberty of Trading) that was a network of free trade organizations in interwar Japan and had an intellectual relationship with an international neoliberal network. The Association not only interacted with the international neoliberal network, but also essentially traced a similar ideological trajectory to its Western counterparts. Both idealized a unified world economy and engaged in the reduction of trade barriers at the end of the 1920s. During the 1930s, they became more active, focusing on the institutional construction that made the international economy more open. In contrast to this basic similarity, Japanese neoliberals have two features: (1) their discourse maintained a strong interest in national-level resources and population issues; and (2) at the end of the 1930s, they insisted that the expansion of the Empire of Japan was necessary to achieve an open world economy. This study supports the idea that the development of neoliberalism had already begun in interwar Japan as well as Western countries.