The Great War and the Genesis of Pigou’s A Study in Public Finance

This essay explores three closely linked themes. (1) The arguments A.C. Pigou employed in his political economy of the Great War to support his conclusions concerning how Britain could best pay for the war and finance the debt incurred in waging it. (2) The more general sociological and institutional assumptions of his political economy of war: his conviction, stated as early as February 1916, that some twenty years after the Great War, Britain would confront the prospect of a total war, requiring the mobilization of the economy to achieve the military objectives of the state; the institutional expansion and re-articulation of the state in responding to imperatives of national security; and the need for a much more sophisticated regime of public finance, grounded in an economic analysis that would identify the most effective means of covering the costs of these exigencies. (3) The genesis of his book A Study in Public Finance (1928) as a generalization and reconfiguration of his political economy of war on the plane of policy analysis