The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Book Cover for: The First Serious Optimist: A. C. Pigou and the Birth of Welfare Economics, Ian Kumekawa

The First Serious Optimist: A. C. Pigou and the Birth of Welfare Economics

Ian Kumekawa

A groundbreaking intellectual biography of one of the twentieth century's most influential economists

The First Serious Optimist is an intellectual biography of the British economist A. C. Pigou (1877-1959), a founder of welfare economics and one of the twentieth century's most important and original thinkers. Though long overshadowed by his intellectual rival John Maynard Keynes, Pigou was instrumental in focusing economics on the public welfare. And his reputation is experiencing a renaissance today, in part because his idea of "externalities" or spillover costs is the basis of carbon taxes. Drawing from a wealth of archival sources, Ian Kumekawa tells how Pigou reshaped the way the public thinks about the economic role of government and the way economists think about the public good.

Setting Pigou's ideas in their personal, political, social, and ethical context, the book follows him as he evolved from a liberal Edwardian bon vivant to a reserved but reform-minded economics professor. With World War I, Pigou entered government service, but soon became disenchanted with the state he encountered. As his ideas were challenged in the interwar period, he found himself increasingly alienated from his profession. But with the rise of the Labour Party following World War II, the elderly Pigou re-embraced a mind-set that inspired a colleague to describe him as "the first serious optimist."

The story not just of Pigou but also of twentieth-century economics, The First Serious Optimist explores the biographical and historical origins of some of the most important economic ideas of the past hundred years. It is a timely reminder of the ethical roots of economics and the discipline's long history as an active intermediary between the state and the market.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Princeton University Press
  • Publish Date: Jun 6th, 2017
  • Pages: 352
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.40in - 6.40in - 1.40in - 1.58lb
  • EAN: 9780691163482
  • Categories: Social Scientists & PsychologistsEconomics - TheoryEurope - Great Britain - General

More books to explore

Book Cover for: Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, Francis Fukuyama
Book Cover for: The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds, Michael Lewis
Book Cover for: Money for Nothing: The Scientists, Fraudsters, and Corrupt Politicians Who Reinvented Money, Panicked a Nation, and Made the World Rich, Thomas Levenson
Book Cover for: Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events, Robert J. Shiller
Book Cover for: Freud: The Making of an Illusion, Frederick Crews
Book Cover for: Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy, Elizabeth Popp Berman
Book Cover for: The Economics of Inequality, Thomas Piketty
Book Cover for: Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty
Book Cover for: Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the Us Working Class, Mike Davis
Book Cover for: Payback, Margaret Atwood
Book Cover for: If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home, Lucy Worsley
Book Cover for: An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk, Allison Schrager
Book Cover for: The Lonely Century: How to Restore Human Connection in a World That's Pulling Apart, Noreena Hertz
Book Cover for: The Ordinary Business of Life: A History of Economics from the Ancient World to the Twenty-First Century - New Edition, Roger E. Backhouse
Book Cover for: The Road to Serfdom, F. a. Hayek

About the Author

Kumekawa, Ian: - Ian Kumekawa is a PhD candidate in history at Harvard University, where he works on the history of economic thinking.

More books by Ian Kumekawa

Book Cover for: Empty Vessel: The Story of the Global Economy in One Barge, Ian Kumekawa

Praise for this book

"Co-Winner of the 2018 Joseph J. Spengler Best Book Prize, History of Economics Society"
"[A] graceful and elegantly structured new intellectual biography."---Duncan Kelly, Times Literary Supplement
"Through his biographical and historical study of Pigou and his work, Kumekawa shows us how the Cambridge professor bound ethics and economics together, and did so in a way that intersected with the social changes, spurred by the rise of the Labor Party, that were taking place around him."-- "Choice"
"[This book] should be required reading for every economist who has an interest in public economics and public choice economics. . . . It will reaffirm the reader's faith in the value of intellectual history and of the value of archival historical research. I cannot recommend this book highly enough."---Peter J. Boettke, Public Choice
"[A] fascinating intellectual biography . . . . it is very well researched and the result is a truly enjoyable read."---Maxime Desmarais-Tremblay, History of Economics Ideas