Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Introduction: towards a reinterpretation of the history of welfare economics / Roger E. Backhouse and Tamotsu Nishizawa -- Marshall on welfare economics and the welfare state / Peter Groenewegen -- Pigou's "prima facie case": market failure in theory and practice / Steven G. Medema -- Welfare, taxation and social justice: reflections on Cambridge economists from Marshall to Keynes / Martin Daunton -- The Oxford approach to the philosophical foundations of the welfare state / Yuichi Shionoya -- J.A. Hobson as a welfare economist / Roger E. Backhouse -- The ethico-historical approach abroad: the case of Fukuda / Tamotsu Nishizawa -- "The great educator of unlikely people": H.G. Wells and the origins of the welfare state / Richard Toye -- Whose welfare state? Beveridge versus Keynes / Maria Cristina Marcuzzo -- Beveridge on a welfare society: an integration of his trilogy / Atsushi Komine -- Welfare economics, old and new / Roger E. Backhouse and Tamotsu Nishizawa.

This book re-examines early twentieth-century British welfare economics in the context of the emergence of the welfare state. There are fresh views of the well-known Cambridge School of Sidgwick, Marshall, Pigou, and Keynes, by Peter Groenewegen, Steven G. Medema, and Martin Daunton. This is placed against a less well-known Oxford approach to welfare: Yuichi Shionoya explores its foundations in the idealist philosophy of T. H. Green; Roger E. Backhouse considers the work of its leading exponent, J. A. Hobson; and Tamotsu Nishizawa discusses the spread of this approach in Britain. Finally, the book covers welfare economics in the policy arena: Maria Cristina Marcuzzo and Atsushi Komine discuss Keynes and Beveridge, and Richard Toye points to the possible influence of H. G. Wells on Churchill and Lloyd George. A substantial introduction frames the discussion, and a postscript relates these ideas to the work of Robbins and subsequent developments in welfare economics.