Assessments of A. C. Pigou's Fellowship Theses

Abstract

This study reports on the light that documents stored in the Archive Centre at King’s College Cambridge shed on A. C. Pigou’s fellowship theses. Particular consideration is given to Walter Raleigh’s and Brooke Foss Westcott’s assessments of Pigou’s first, and unsuccessful, fellowship thesis on Robert Browning as a Religious Teacher and to Alfred Marshall’s and Herbert Foxwell’s assessments of Pigou’s second, and successful, fellowship thesis on The Causes and Effects of Change in the Relative Values of Agricultural Produce in the United Kingdom during the last Fifty Years. The principal findings of the study are that: Pigou’s first thesis is more important to his subsequent and famous studies on wealth and welfare than is generally appreciated; and the assessors’ diverse reactions to his second thesis largely reflect their different views on the scope for economic theory to be used by scholars to shed light on economic history.