Welfare economics is a branch of economics using microeconomic techniques to simultaneously determine the efficiency of the overall economy and the income distribution consequences associated with it. As a British economist best known for his work in many fields and particularly in welfare economics, Pigou attended the prestigious Harrow School and was a graduate of King's College, Cambridge, where he studied under Alfred Marshall, famously known as the creator of "The Marshall Plan".Here in The Economics of Welfare, Pigou asserts that individuals are the best judges of their own welfare, that people will prefer greater welfare to less welfare, and that welfare can be adequately measured either in monetary terms or as a relative preference.Scholars and students of both economics and welfare policy will find Pigou's work a significant contribution to current debates on welfare policy directions. Included in Volume II: "The National Dividend and Labour" and "The Distribution of the National Dividend." ALSO AVAILABLE AT COSIMO CLASSICS: The Economics of Welfare: Volume IARTHUR CECIL PIGOU (1877-1959) was a Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University from 1908 to 1943. He is best known for the development of "The Pigou Effect," an economics term, which refers to the stimulation of output & employment caused by increasing consumption. Pigou served on a number of royal commissions, including the 1919 committee on income tax.