A.C. Pigou and the 'Marshallian' thought style

The purpose of this study is to consider whether the style of economic thinking associated with A.C. Pigou falls within the general thought style established by his predecessor in the Cambridge Chair of Political Economy, Alfred Marshall. The dissertation attempts to reconcile opposing perspectives on Pigou that have arisen in the literature by clarifying Pigou’s position as a ‘Marshallian’ using Ludwik Fleck's notion of a ‘thought style’ that is shared amongst practitioners of a science, with Fleck also referring to the communal carrier of a particular thought style as a ‘thought collective’. Notwithstanding significant differences that arose between Pigou’s and Marshall’s representations of economic theory, this study contends that Pigou’s economics continued to fall within the broad category of a Marshallian ‘thought style’, although it evolved and adapted to a more formalist representation of theory under Pigou’s leadership.