Adam Smith turned economic theory on its head in 1776 when he declared that the pursuit of self-interest mediated by the market itself--not by government--led, via an invisible hand, to the greatest possible welfare for society as a whole. The Hesitant Hand examines how subsequent economic...

In a paper delivered at the December 1955 meeting of the Econometric Society, Paul Samuelson noted that though economists had done "work of high quality and great quantity in the field of taxation," the theory of public expenditure had been "relatively neglected" (1958, 332). Anglo-American...

This essay identifies and explores the role of selective perception, sentiment and valuation in the formation of economic policy, with particular reference to the conduct of policy-making under the aegis of Pigovian and Paretian welfare economics. First, we identify certain background...

The theory of government failure was developed as a reaction against Pigovian welfare economics and the Cambridge approach to economic policy analysis generally, which ostensibly lacked a theory of governmental behavior. We argue that the Cambridge tradition — as reflected in the writings of...