This innovative history of welfare economics challenges the view that welfare economics can be discussed without taking ethical values into account. Whatever their theoretical commitments, when economists have considered practical problems relating to public policy, they have adopted a wider range of ethical values, whether equality, justice, freedom, or democracy. Even canonical authors in the history of welfare economics are shown to have adopted ethical positions different from those with which they are commonly associated. Welfare Theory, Public Action, and Ethical Values explores the...

This text presents Alfred Marshall's final, unfinished, and unpublished book. His main volume, Principles of Economics, was first published in 1890, and was, for a long period of time, the textbook par excellence on which generations of economists were trained. Despite its success and its importance, the book, in its eight editions, testifies to some extent to the failure of Marshall's original editorial project which should have consisted of multiple volumes and culminated with the publication of a final work on economic progress. Marshall's death in 1924 made it impossible to realize his...