IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/hop/hopeec/v46y2014i3p357-386.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Sanguine Science: The Historical Contexts of A. C. Pigou's Welfare Economics

Author

Listed:
  • Norikazu Takami

Abstract

This essay identifies A. C. Pigou’s welfare economics as an attempt to bring order to the political debate in the context of the emergence of a more inclusive democracy in the United Kingdom associated in particular with the success of the Labour Party in the 1906 general election. To establish this identification the essay discusses Pigou’s contacts, both direct and indirect, with contemporary political movements and argues that his academic work was intertwined with his participation in policy debates. First, as a prologue, his disagreement with the historical economists ran parallel with his involvement in the tariff controversy. Second, Pigou became embroiled in a quarrel with an MP who was a representative critic of liberal social legislation and cooperated with an antisocialist organization. Third, Pigou had indirect contact with a student socialist movement. I conclude that Pigou’s welfare economics should be situated as part of a widespread and simultaneous movement toward broader democracy.

Suggested Citation

  • Norikazu Takami, 2014. "The Sanguine Science: The Historical Contexts of A. C. Pigou's Welfare Economics," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 46(3), pages 357-386, Fall.
  • Handle: RePEc:hop:hopeec:v:46:y:2014:i:3:p:357-386
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hope.dukejournals.org/content/46/3/357.full.pdf+html
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ottmar Edenhofer & Max Franks & Matthias Kalkuhl, 2021. "Pigou in the 21st Century: a tribute on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Economics of Welfare," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 28(5), pages 1090-1121, October.
    2. Aldrich, John, 2022. "Good, Economic Welfare and the National Dividend—Pigou’s Welfare Triad," OSF Preprints 2vzrx, Center for Open Science.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hop:hopeec:v:46:y:2014:i:3:p:357-386. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Center for the History of Political Economy Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?viewby=journal&productid=45614 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.