HOME » Publications » Economic Review

Abstract

Vol. 65, No. 2, pp. 97-112 (2014)

“Some Origins of Welfare Economics: Marshall, Ruskin and Tokuzo Fukuda”
Tamotsu Nishizawa (Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University)

This paper investigates the origins of welfare economics starting from its formative age. Pigou's Economics of Welfare started a history of ‘old’ and ‘new’ welfare economics based on economic welfarism. But at that time there were multiple economic ideas on welfare. While the main stream was the Cambridge school using a neo-classical approach, there was also the Oxford approach. ‘Another economics of welfare’, developed by people like Hobson, and emanating from Ruskin's ‘no wealth but life’, was quite influential. This paper, considering the origin of non-welfaristic economics of welfare, re-examines Marshall's welfare and his organic growth theory. The paper points out some commonality between Marshall's ideas and Ruskin's, and make clearer the existence of the non-welfaristic economic ideas by referring to Fukuda's welfare economic studies.