By the turn of the twentieth century, Lausanne and Cambridge were the centres of diffusion of two rival versions of marginalism. This paper focuses on the position of Maffeo Pantaleoni, a leading figure of the late nineteenth century 'renaissance' of Italian political economy, with respect to...

Consumer surplus and the notion of the social optimality of competitive equilibria are usually indicated as Marshall's main contributions to welfare economics. His willingness to develop the policy implications of these concepts, however, was half-hearted to say the least. This paper argues that...