Arthur Cecil Pigou

Arthur Cecil Pigou (November 18, 1877 – March 7, 1959) was an English economist. As a teacher and builder of the school of economics at Cambridge University he trained and influenced the many Cambridge economists who went on to fill chairs of economics around the world. His work covered various fields of economics, particularly welfare economics, but his reputation was affected because many economic writers used his work as a basis on which to define their own own opposing views. He reluctantly served on public committees including the 1919 Royal Commission on Income tax.

Early Life and Education

Arthur Cecil Pigou was born on the Isle of Wight, the son of Clarence Pigou an army officer and his wife Nora Lus. He won a scholarship to Harrow School where he was in Newlands House and became the first modern head of school. In 1896 he was admitted to King's College, Cambridge, as a history scholar where he first read history under Oscar Browning. He won the Chancellor's Medal for English Verse and the Cobden, Burney, and Adam Smith prizes, and made his mark in the Cambridge Union Society of which he became President in 1900. He came to economics though the study of philosophy and ethics under the Moral Science Tripos. He studied economics under Alfred Marshall, whom he later succeeded as professor of political economy. His first and unsuccessful attempt for a fellowship at King's was a thesis on `Browning as a Religious Teacher'. As Marshall's prize student and designated heir, Pigou personified the Cambridge Neoclassicals — the heart of the Marshallian orthodoxy in the first third of the century.

Academic work

Pigou began lecturing on economics in 1901 and started giving the course on advanced economics to second year students on which was based the education of many Cambridge economists over the next thirty years. In his early days he lectured on a variety of subjects outside economics. He became a Fellow of Kings College Cambridge on his second attempt in 1902 and was made Girdler's lecturer in the summer of 1904. He devoted himself to exploring the various departments of economic doctrine, and as a result published the works on which his world-wide reputation rests. His first work was more philosophical than his later work as he expanded the essay which had won him the Adam Smith prize in 1903 into `Principles and Methods of Industrial Peace. In 1908 Pigou was elected Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University in succession to Alfred Marshall. He held the post until 1943. One of his early acts was to provide private financial support for John Maynard Keynes to work on probability theory.^[1] Pigou and Keynes had great affection and mutual regard for each other and their intellectual differences never put their personal friendship seriously in jeopardy. Pigou's major work, Wealth and Welfare (1912, 1920), brought welfare economics into the scope of economic analysis. In particular, Pigou is responsible for the distinction between private and social marginal products and costs. He originated the idea that governments can, via a mixture of taxes and subsidies, correct such perceived market failures — or "internalize the externalities". Pigovian taxes, taxes used to correct negative externalities, are named in his honor. This approach came under attack from Lionel Robbins and Frank Knight. The New Welfare Economics that arose in the late 1930s dispensed with much of Pigou's analytical toolbox. Later, the Public Choice theorists rejected Pigou's approach for its naive "benevolent despot" assumption. Finally, Ronald Coase demonstrated that efficient outcomes could be generated without government intervention when property rights are clearly defined. Coase presents his case in the article "The Problem of Social Cost" (1960 — see Coase Theorem). In the The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, Keynes held up Pigou's Theory of Unemployment (1933) as the example of everything that was wrong with Neoclassical macroeconomics. In response Pigou produced a strongly critical review of Keynes work largely because he considered Keynes had dared to attack Marshall using Pigou's Theory as a stalking horse. The rest of Pigou's life was spent occasionally counterattacking (e.g. with the "Pigou Effect" ("The Classical Stationary State", 1943) or submitting to the "Keynesian Revolution". In a couple of lectures delivered in 1949 he made a more favourable, though still critical evaluation of Keynes' work: "I should say... that in setting out and developing his fundamental conception, Keynes made a very important, original and valuable addition to the armoury of economic analysis". ^[2] He later said that he had come with the passage of time to feel that he had failed earlier to appreciate some of the important things that Keynes was trying to say. ^[3]

Life outside academia

Pigou had strong principles and these gave him some problems in World War I. He was not prepared to undertake military service when it required an obligation to destroy human life. He remained at Cambridge, but during the vacations was an ambulance driver at the front for the Friend's Ambulance Unit, and insisted on undertaking jobs of particular danger. Towards the end of the war he reluctantly accepted a post in the Board of Trade, but showed little aptitude for the work. His sense of duty included a readiness to contribute to public service tasks. He was a reluctant member of the Cunliffe Committee on the Currency and Foreign Exchange (1918-1919), the Royal Commission on the Income Tax (1919-1920), and the Chamberlain Committee on the Currency and Bank of England Note Issues (1924-1925). The report of the last body was the prelude to the much criticised restoration of the gold standard at the old parity of exchange. Pigou was elected to the British Academy in 1925, but resigned in 1947. In later years he withdrew from national affairs and devoted himself to more academic economics and writing weighty letters to the Times on problems of the day. He was a foreign honourary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a foreign member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, and an honourary resident of the International Economic Committee. He loved mountains and climbing, and introduced to climbing many friends like Wilfred Noyce, who became far greater climbers. However an illness affecting his heart developed in the early nineteen-thirties and this affected his vigour, curtailed his climbing and left him with phases of debility for the rest of his life. Pigou gave up his professor's chair in 1943, but remained a Fellow of Kings College until his death. In his later years, he gradually became more of a recluse, emerging occasionally from his rooms to give lectures or take a walk.

Major publications

• Browning as a Religious Teacher, 1901.
• The Riddle of the Tariff, 1903.
• "Monopoly and Consumers' Surplus", 1904, EJ.
• Industrial Peace, 1905.
• Import Duties, 1906.
• "Review of the Fifth Edition of Marshall's Principles of Economics", 1907, EJ.
• "Producers' and Consumers' Surplus", 1910, EJ.
• Wealth and Welfare, 1912.
• Unemployment, 1914.
• "The Value of Money", 1917, QJE.
• The Economics of Welfare, 1920.
• "Empty Economic Boxes: A reply", 1922, EJ.
• The Political Economy of War, 1922.
• "Exchange Value of Legal Tender Money", 1922, in: Essays in Applied Economics.
• Essays in Applied Economics, 1923.
• Industrial Fluctuations, 1927.
• "The Law of Diminishing and Increasing Cost", 1927, EJ.
• A Study in Public Finance, 1928.
• "An Analysis of Supply", 1928, EJ.
• The Theory of Unemployment, 1933.
• The Economics of Stationary States, 1935.
• "Mr. J.M. Keynes's General Theory", 1936, Economica.
• "Real and Money Wage Rates in Relation to Unemployment", 1937, EJ.
• "Money Wages in Relation to Unemployment", 1938, EJ.
• Employment and Equilibrium, 1941.
• "The Classical Stationary State", 1943, EJ.
• Lapses from Full Employment, 1944.
• "Economic Progress in a Stable Environment", 1947, Economica.
• The Veil of Money, 1949.
• Keynes's General Theory: A retrospective view, 1951.
• Essays in Economics, 1952.

See also

• Pigou
• Pigovian tax
• Pigou effect

References

• Dictionary of National Biography

External links

• Profile of Arthur Cecil Pigou at the History of Economic Thought website.
• Link to free online copy of "The Economics of Welfare" at the Library of Economics and Liberty