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A.C. Pigou and the Cambridge Tradition

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Book cover A.C. Pigou and the 'Marshallian' Thought Style

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought ((PHET))

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Abstract

This chapter is an introductory chapter. It broadly outlines this book’s central contention—that is, following Alfred Marshall’s retirement, the style of economic thought associated with Marshall evolved in an adaptive way through the work of his successor Arthur Cecil Pigou and, notwithstanding the many differences in Marshall’s and Pigou’s representations of economic theory, Pigou’s economics continued to fall within the broad category of a Marshallian ‘thought style’. The general historiographical approach taken is outlined and a brief review of each chapter is provided to orient the reader to the structure of the book.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ryo Hongo (2007) has also completed a treatment of Pigou, but this has been published only in Japanese.

  2. 2.

    Collard followed these works with other significant contributions (1990, 1996, 2002, 2011, 2013) as did Aslanbeigui (1990, 1992a, b, c, 1996, 1997). Furthermore, early contributions are Aslanbeigui and Medema (1998), Aslanbeigui and Michele Naples (1997) and Paul Flatau (1997, 2001).

  3. 3.

    The phrase ‘completeness and simplicity of presentation’ has been pointed out as one of the services rendered by Pigou’s laying out of this theory in mathematical form by S.E. Harris (1935, p. 323) in his review of Pigou’s book The Theory of Unemployment.

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  1. Independent Scholar, Duncraig, WA, Australia

    Karen Lovejoy Knight

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Lovejoy Knight, K. (2018). A.C. Pigou and the Cambridge Tradition. In: A.C. Pigou and the 'Marshallian' Thought Style. Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01018-8_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01018-8_1

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