Arthur Cecil Pigou

Arthur Cecil Pigou (November 18, 1877 – March 7, 1959) was an English economist, known for his work in many fields and particularly in welfare economics. He served on a number of royal commissions including the 1919 commission on income tax.

However, A.C. Pigou’s fame stems from being responsible for the famous distinction between private and social marginal products and costs and the idea that governments can, via a mixture of taxes and subsidies, correct such market failures - or "internalize the externalities."

Biography

Pigou was born in the family home of his mother in 1877 at Ryde, in the Isle of Wight, on the eighteenth of November. He was the eldest son of Clarence and Nora Pigou. His father came from the Huguenot line and his mother’s family came from a line that had won fame and fortune in Irish administration. The pride and background of Pigou’s family had helped to push him along his later path in life.

Like his father, Pigou attended Harrow. His abilities in academics had gotten him an entrance scholarship to the school. Athletics was also one of Pigou’s strongpoints. His talents in sports allowed him to be approved of by many at a time in history where athletics was looked at as being more important than academics. He ended his stay at Harrow as head of the school.

Afterwards, he went to King's College, Cambridge as a history scholar. He studied under Alfred Marshall, whom he later succeeded as professor of political economy. Pigou was a Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University from 1908 to 1943.

His most important work was published in 1912 as Wealth and Welfare, but was expanded to become the better known The Economics of Welfare in 1920. He became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1927.

A.C. Pighou was a devoted expositor of Alfred Marshall's economics while he held the Cambridge chair. He pioneered welfare economics and his concerns for justice and the protection of the interests of the poor. These views were rejected by John Maynard Keynes. Arthur Pigou retaliated by producing a severe review of John Maynard Keynes's book ( Pigou, 1936 ).

Later, Arthur Pigou began to appreciate the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, and despite their academic differences they remained firm friends. A.C. Pigou died in 1959 in Cambridge.

Major Works

Comments on Marshall’s “Principles of Economics”

In this excerpt, Pigou’s later logical and scientific approaches are clearly detected:

“……Prof. Marshall's work upon the National Dividend…. is perhaps even more important than his work on Time… The conception of the National Dividend is not an academic toy, but a practical instrument of great power designed for service in the concrete solution of social problems. The National Dividend—the flow of economic goods and services made available during the year—is the centre of the whole of this reasoning. Itself a means, it serves, in fact, as a nucleus to which ends cohere, and in analysis, as a focus capable of concentrating together all discussion of economic forces and activities....…….……...Starting from the fact that the growth of the National Dividend depends on the continued progress of invention and the accumulation of superior appliances for production, we are bound to reflect that up to the present time nearly all of the innumerable inventions that have given us our command over Nature have been made by independent workers, and that the contributions from Government officials all the world over has been relatively small…….. ( Marshall, Principles of Economics, p. 712)" ………. It is by patient concentration upon the activities underlying the National Dividend that deeper issues of this order are brought to light. The dividend constitutes the kernel of economic theory because—along with those moral and other aspects of practical problems which Prof. Marshall would be the last to neglect—it is the centre of sound philanthropic endeavour. It is to an analysis of this that we are driven when, throwing off the moral torpor of indolent optimism, we refuse, "with our modern resources and knowledge, to look contentedly at the continued destruction of all that is worth having in multitudes of human lives," and demand from social science guidance to social reform…..” ( Pigou, 1907.)

The Economics of Welfare

Let us start with two excerpts that typify Pigou’s social policy, mentioned in above section:

“…..One person A, in the course of rendering some service, for which payments is made, to a second person B, incidentally also renders services or disservices to other persons… of such sort that payment cannot be exacted from benefited parties or compensation enforced on behalf of the injured parties…” ( Pigou, 1932. )

“….It is possible for the State… to remove the divergence [ between private and social net product ] through bounties and taxes…..” ( ibid., 1932. )

In the Economics of Welfare, Pigou says that his aim is to ascertain how far the free play of self-interest, acting under the existing legal system, tends to distribute the country's resources in the way most favorable to the production of a large national dividend, and how far it is feasible for State action to improve upon "natural" tendencies.

He starts by referring to "…optimistic followers of the classical economists…" who have argued that the value of production would be maximized if the government refrained from any interference in the economic system and the economic arrangements were those which came about "naturally."( ibid. 1932 )

Pigou goes on to say that if self-interest does promote economic welfare, it is because human institutions have been devised to make it so. He concludes:

“….But even in the most advanced States there are failures and imperfections. . . there are many obstacles that prevent a community's resources from being distributed . . . in the most efficient way. The study of these constitutes our present problem . . . . its purpose is essentially practical. It seeks to bring into clearer light some of the ways in which it now is, or eventually may become, feasible for governments to control the play of economic forces in such wise as to promote the economic welfare, and through that, the total welfare, of their citizens as a whole…...”( ibid. 1932.)

Pigou’s thoughts are:

“…. Some have argued that no State action is needed. But the system has performed as well as it has because of State action: Nonetheless, there are still imperfections. ….. it might happen . . . that costs are thrown upon people not directly concerned, through, say, uncompensated damage done to surrounding woods by sparks from railway engines. All such effects must be included—some of them will be positive, others negative elements—in reckoning up the social net product of the marginal increment of any volume of resources turned into any use or place…..”

EXAMPLE : Suppose the mill was being planned on a certain river and an economist was given all facts about the “river-in-question” and told that a paper mill was to be sited so that it could discharge oxygen-consuming waste into the river. Suppose further that the economist was asked to analyze the situation, offer a policy for siting the mill, and comment on the practical aspects of adopting the policy proposal as a general rule.The first approach involves an externality analysis, where the paper mill pollutes the river, imposing an unwanted cost on society, a cost that does not enter the mill owners' profit calculations. This is the problem of social cost.

Following this line of inquiry, failure to consider the external cost leads to too much paper and too little environmental quality. This economist would be using an analytical framework developed by A. C. Pigou who would argued that pollution generates a social cost that should be dealt with by the central government. He would proposed a system of taxes, bounties, and regulations for resolving the problem. Most likely, the economist using this framework would call for some form of effluent taxes or regulation to control the mill's discharge.

Pigou's solution spoke of market failure and the need for a central authority to fine-tune markets so that the appropriate level of pollution would emerge. This approach called for collection of complicated and rapidly changing information, translating the information into a tax or regulation, and imposing the tax or rule on the polluter.

In fact, modern environmental economics began with the work of Arthur Pigou, who developed the analysis of externalities. His name is attached to the traditional policy proposal, "Pigouvian taxes" on polluting activities, equal to the value of the damages.

Coase’s alternative solution

The second approach likely taken by an economist considers the paper mill and others who wish to consume or enjoy water quality as part of a competitive market where people bargain for the use of rights to scarce property. This analysis has nothing to do with polluters'imposing cost on society, but everything to do with competing demands for use of an asset.

If rights to the asset are defined and assigned to members of the river-basin community, then those planning to build the paper mill must bargain with the rightholders to determine just how much, if any, they will discharge into the river.

If the rights are held by the mill, then the existing communities along the river must bargain with the mill owner for rights to water quality. Again, bargaining determines the amount of discharge to the river.

This approach relies on the work of Nobel Laureate ( Ronald H. Coase, 1960), who established a different way of thinking about the problem of social cost. Using this framework, an economist might recommend a meeting of the mill owners and others who have access to the river. After organizing the parties, negotiations would ensue. If existing river users owned water-quality rights, the mill would have to buy the rights in order to discharge specified amounts of waste. If the mill had the right to pollute, existing river users would have to buy water quality from the mill, paying the mill to limit its discharges.

Comparison of Pigou’s and Coase’s approaches

The annual count of citations to "The Problem of Social Cost" for the years 1966-1995. Included in the figure are citations to Pigou's “The Economics of Welfare.” The citation data are superimposed on a count of Federal Register pages for the same years. The data mapping suggests several things.

First, Pigou's influence on academics seems to operate at a steady state. There is no evidence that Pigovians were responding to the growth of regulation occurring around them. The Coase citations indicate the reverse. References to his ideas seem to be a reaction to the growth of the regulatory state. There is a systematic relationship between Coase citations and new pages of federal rules. Coase challenges command-and-control regulation. Pigou's influence seems to be narrow and focused; his prescriptions are in harmony with the rise of the regulatory state.

These are evidence of positive transaction costs that limit direct Coasean bargaining. Among the world players are governments and other organizations that are immune to the spur of competition and have no need for quality assurance. It is this part of the world that Pigou was really addressing. It is government itself that must be controlled with government regulation.

Theory of Unemployment

Substance of the Theory

Pigou’s classical theory of employment ( Pigou, 1933 ) has been based on two fundamental postulates, namely:

• [1] The wage is equal to the marginal product of labour.

That is to say, the wage of an employed person is equal to the value which would be lost if employment were to be reduced by one unit (after deducting any other costs which this reduction of output would avoid); subject, however, to the qualification that the equality may be disturbed, in accordance with certain principles, if competition and markets are imperfect.

• [2] The utility of the wage when a given volume of labour is employed is equal to the marginal disutility of that amount of employment.

That is to say, the real wage of an employed person is that which is just sufficient ( in the estimation of the employed persons themselves ) to induce the volume of the actually forthcoming labour; subject to the qualification that the equality for each individual unit of labour may be disturbed by combination between employable units analogous to the imperfections of competition which qualify the first postulate.

Disutility here must be understood to cover every kind of reason which might lead a man, or a body of men, to withhold their labour rather than accept a wage which had to them a utility below a certain minimum.

This second postulate is compatible with what may be called "frictional" unemployment. For a ealistic interpretation of it, we must legitimately allow for various inexactnesses of adjustment which stand in the way of continuous full employment.

EXAMPLE: Unemployment due to a temporary loss of balance between the relative quantities of specialised resources as a result of miscalculation or intermittent demand; or to time-lags consequent on unforeseen changes; or to the fact that the change-over from one employment to another cannot be effected without a certain delay, so that there will always exist in a non-static society a proportion of resources unemployed "between jobs."

In addition to "frictional" unemployment, the postulate is also compatible with "voluntary" unemployment due to the refusal or inability of a unit of labour, as a result of legislation or social practices or of combination for collective bargaining or of slow response to change or of mere human obstinacy, to accept a reward corresponding to the value of the product attributable to its marginal productivity.

But these two categories of "frictional" unemployment and "voluntary" unemployment are comprehensive. The classical postulates do not admit of the possibility of the third category, which we might define as "involuntary" unemployment.

Subject to these qualifications, the volume of employed resources is duly determined, according to the classical theory, by the two postulates.

The first gives us the demand schedule for employment, the second gives us the supply schedule; and the amount of employment is fixed at the point where the utility of the marginal product balances the disutility of the marginal employment.

From this follows that there are only four possible means of increasing employment:

• An improvement in organisation or in foresight which diminishes "frictional" unemployment;

• a decrease in the marginal disutility of labour, as expressed by the real wage for which additional labour is available, so as to diminish "voluntary" unemployment;

• an increase in the marginal physical productivity of labour in the wage-goods industries (to use Professor Pigou's convenient term for goods upon the price of which the utility of the money-wage depends); or

• an increase in the price of non-wage-goods compared with the price of wage-goods, associated with a shift in the expenditure of non-wage-earners from wage-goods to non-wage-goods ( ibid. 1933. )

Some secondary effects

• Price increase.

All this, moreover, has its reverse side. In an exchange economy everybody’s money income is somebody else’s cost. Every increase in hourly wages, unless or until compensated by an equal increase in hourly productivity, is an increase in costs of production. An increase in costs of production, where the government controls prices and forbids any price increase, takes the profit from marginal producers, forces them out of business, and means a shrinkage in production and a growth in unemployment.

Even where a price increase is possible, the higher price discourages buyers, shrinks the market, and also leads to unemployment. If a 30 percent increase in hourly wages all around the circle forces a 30 percent increase in prices, labor can buy no more of the product than it could at the beginning; and the merry-go-round must start all over again.

No doubt many will be inclined to dispute the contention that a 30 percent increase in wages can force as great a percentage increase in prices. It is true that this result can follow only in the long run and only if monetary and credit policy permit it. If money and credit are so inelastic that they do not increase when wages are forced up (and if we assume that the higher wages are not justified by existing labor productivity in dollar terms), then the chief effect of forcing up wage rates will be to force unemployment ( Pigou 1933. )

And it is probable, in that case, that total payrolls, both in dollar amount and in real purchasing power, will be lower than before. For a drop in employment (brought about by union policy and not as a transitional result of technological advance) necessarily means that fewer goods are being produced for everyone. And it is unlikely that labor will compensate for the absolute drop in production by getting a larger relative share of the production that is left ( ibid. 1933. )

• Elasticity of demand for labour.

While analyzing the elasticity of demand for labour, Paul H. Douglas in America and A. C. Pigou in England, the first from analyzing a great mass of statistics, the second by almost purely deductive methods, arrived independently at the conclusion that the elasticity of the demand for labor is somewhere between 3 and 4.

This means, in less technical language, that “….a 1 percent reduction in the real rate of wage is likely to expand the aggregate demand for labor by for labor by not less than 3 percent…..” ( ibid. 1933 )

Or, to put the matter the other way, “…If wages are pushed up above the point of marginal productivity, the decrease in employment would normally be from three to four times as great as the increase in hourly rates……”( ibid. 1933 ) so that the total incomes of the workers would be reduced correspondingly.

“….Even if these figures are taken to represent only the elasticity of the demand for labor revealed in a given period of the past and not necessarily to forecast that of the future, they deserve the most serious consideration….”( ibid, 1933, p. 96. )

The Pigou effect

The Pigou effect is an economics term that refers to the stimulation of output and employment caused by increasing consumption due to a rise in real balances of wealth, particularly during deflation.

Wealth was defined by Arthur Cecil Pigou as the sum of the money supply and government bonds divided by the price level. He argued that Keynes's General theory was deficient in not specifying a link from "real balances" to current consumption, and that the inclusion of such a "wealth effect" would make the economy more 'self correcting' to drops in aggregate demand than Keynes predicted. Because the effect derives from changes to the "Real Balance" , this critique of Keynesianism is also called the Real Balance effect.

History

The Pigou effect was first popularize in ( Pigou, 1943 ). He had proposed the link from balances to consumption earlier, and Gottfried Haberler had made a similar objection the year after the General Theory's publication ().

Following the tradition of classical economics, Pigou favoured the idea of "natural rates" to which the economy would return, and saw the "Real Balance" effect as a mechanism to fuse Keynesian and classical models. (In most cases - he acknowledged that sticky prices might still prevent reversion to natural output levels after a demand shock.)

Conclusion

Pigou has the hope, one reaching back to Francis Bacon, that humans will be able to learn enough about the world (gain light) so that they can control it and to control for the benefit of all people (knowledge/light that gives fruit).Pigou identifies economics as a fruit-bearing activity.

He hopes that with proper understanding of the economy and a proper understanding of what leads to human welfare, "the authorities" will be able to improve things in our very imperfect world. His book, The Economics of Welfare, is an attempt to provide guidance to the government, certainly filled with men of good will, for improving the human condition.

Pigou, strongly influenced by Millsian liberalism, sees the individual as the most important part of society and he wants to respect people by respecting their individuality and, indeed, their subjectivity.

Pigou's book is thoughtful and still worth reading today. In many ways, public finance has not moved much beyond Pigou's work.

Besides, when the rule of law is accepted by consensus, the role of government become clear. Government has a constitutional duty to protect property rights and accordingly to manage its own affairs so the unwanted costs are not imposed on citizens. When fundamental constitutional protections are compromised by the politics of expediency, we find ourselves at sea without an anchor.

Despite all of this, we live our lives in a world formed by statutes and rules. There is tension between the rule of law and rule by politics. Property rights and the market process affect and are affected by the political forces as they play through the larger social system. Political initiatives inspired by purposeful interest groups encounter the untamed forces of the market where contracts and property rights dictate outcomes.

New institutions for protecting environmental assets that emerge from the market encounter the raw forces of politics and an entrenched bureaucracy. Each day, a new world emerges from these encounters. Part of the outcome we observe is Coasean; another part is Pigovian.

Underlying it all is a system of property rights that continues to evolve. Both Coase and Pigou help us to understand this evolutionary process that generates an ever-changing definition of environmental fights.

Most important publications

• Coase, Ronald., "The Problem of Social Cost," Journal of Law and Economics, vol.3, no.1,1960, pp. 1-44,
• Pigou,A.C.,"Review of the Fifth Edition of Marshall's Principles of Economics,"Economic Journal, 1907
• Pigou,A.C.,Wealth and Welfare, Macmillan,London, 1912, pp.493
• Pigou,A.C.,Unemployment, Holt, New York, 1913
• Pigou,A.C., "The Value of Money," Quarterly J. of Economics,1917
• Pigou,A.C., The Economics of Welfare,Macmillan, London 1920, 1932 (4th ed. )
• Pigou, A.C., The Theory of Unemployment, Macmillan, London, 1933, p. 96.
• Pigou, A.C., "Mr. J.M. Keynes's General Theory,"Economica, 1936
• Pigou, A.C.,"The Classical Stationary State," Economic Journal, vol. 53, 1943,
• Pigou, A.C., Lapses from full employment, London, Macmillan 1945 (2. Reprint, 1949)
• Pigou, A.C.,The economics of welfare, Macmillan, London, 1946 ( 8th ed. ), pp. 837
• Pigou, A.C., "Economic Progress in a Stable Environment," Economica, Vol. 14,1947
• Pigou, A.C., Keynes's 'General theory': a retrospective view, Macmillan, London, 1950, pp. 69
• Pigou, A.C., Essays in Economics, Macmillan, London, 1952

External links

• History of the effect on Economy Professor
• History of the extensions of the original Pigou effect into more generalized "Wealth effects."
• Liquidity Traps... Is Japan Really Trapped at the Zero Bound?2002 Kobe University analysis of the deflationary spiral, points out that an "insatiable liquidity preference" neutralizes the Pigou effect, and that theory would then indicate persistent deflationary stagnation (below full employment). Paul Krugman's description of a liquidity trap resistant to the Pigou effect is also mentioned. (His advocacy of long term inflationary JPY policies was partly based on dismissing the Pigou effect.)
• Link to free online copy of "The Economics of Welfare" at the Library of Economics and Liberty

Profile of Arthur Cecil Pigou at the History of Economic Thought website.

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