It’s terrifying how easy it is to be blithely unaware of the intellectual history of economics, even if you read a lot, as I do. History of thought is one of the glaring gaps in undergraduate and graduate courses, alongside economic history per se.
Last week, when I was speaking at the Manchester Statistical Society, my discussant, Dr Richard Pryke, mentioned the work of Ian Little. At the weekend I looked him up and found this fabulous obit written by Professor Peter Oppenheimer and this by Robert Skidelsky.
It turns out that Prof Little’s A Critique of Welfare Economics of 1950 was hugely influential and was reissued in 2002. I’m not at all proud of knowing nothing about it, and will try to fill the gap.
A Critique of Welfare Economics
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Try EJ Mishan as a follow up. First name both Ezra and Edward. I was in his Economics group in 1956, mercifully Miliband free territory. He had a very analytical approach. Interesting in context that Little’s family had been 9th Lancers, see Wikipedia.