Review of “The Hesitant Hand: Taming Self-Interest in the History of Economic Ideas”



while Marshall and Pigou were very hesitant about claiming any theoretical foundation
for laissez-faire, and can be seen as embodying the Mill-Sidgwick Classical tradition, the
work following Pigou—which might be called the Pigovian legacy, did not. The themes
in these three chapters are followed up in Chapter 5, “Coase’s Challenge”. The chapter
explores the limitations of the theoretical argument for laissez faire, and argues that work
following Pigou, with its emphasis on externalities, concentrated on exploring limitations
of the theoretical argument for the market and for laissez-faire. Medema nicely presents
Coase’s critique of the entire externality framework, arguing that Coase’s argument takes
us back to the Classical Mill and Sidgwick framework, of which Marshall and Pigou
were a part, but which the Pigovian tradition departed from. These chapters make a
coherent whole and fit nicely together

A Public Choice Theme

Chapter 4, “Marginalizing Government” seemed to me to be a bit of an interlude
in the story. It discusses the Italian public finance tradition and Knut Wicksell’s work on
social choice. Both of these traditions are important to public choice theory, but they are
quite distinct from the history of the neoclassical social welfare tradition that was the
focus of the first three chapters. Chapter 4 is followed up by Chapter 6, “Marginalizing
Government II”, which explores the rise of public and social choice analysis,
concentrating on public choice analysis. Combined, these two chapters provide a nice
history of the public choice society and of the rise and fall of the Virginia school.

Law and Economics



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