FROM its inception, economics has been oriented toward questions of public policy; the economist's sermons have almost always been aimed at the behavior of governments rather than at that of individuals. For this reason economic tracts have, of necessity, been couched in terms of the "public good" and therefore contained welfare analysis. The need for a special "welfare economics," whose function it is to relate the findings of positive economics to problems of public policy, is of relatively recent date. Only within the last fifty or seventy-five years have economists made serious and consistent efforts to create a positive science divorced (at least conceptually) from the consideration of public policy. For a time it seemed fashionable to label the study of welfare problems as unscientific and, by implication, unworthy of serious attention. However, in the last decade and a half there has been a revival of interest in these problems, and much of the best work of leading contemporary theorists has been directed toward systematizing and extending "welfare economics." The volume under review is, in part, a recapitulation of this work and also a comparison of it with the welfare aspects of "classical economics." Dr. Myint distinguishes three levels of welfare analysis: a "physical level," where "quantities of economic welfare are proportional to quantities of physical products"; a "subjective level," where "quantities of economic welfare are proportional to quantities of satisfaction of given and constant individuals' wants"; and an "ethical level," which is "not concerned with the quantitative measurement of success in achieving given ends, but with the appraisal of the ethical quality of the ends themselves" (cf. p. 229). The book is divided into three parts, with one part devoted to each level. A careful distinction is made between "production" and "distribution" welfare economics. The former is concerned with the conditions of attaining the proper size and composition of society's product, while the latter is concerned with the distribution of that product. The author carefully indicates that the book is confined to the production aspects of welfare theory. The "physical level" of analysis is identified with the work of the classical economists (Smith, Ricardo, Mill, etc.). Their analysis is said to be on a "physical level" because (according to the author) they neglect the question of whether the composition of output is properly adjusted to the pattern of consumer demands and, instead, evaluate the performance of an economic system in terms of its success in maximizing aggregate output (pp. xii and 6-9). In line with this approach, the classical economists attached an intrinsic value (i.e., a value independent of the market-expressed desires of individuals) to the production of durable (i.e., capital) goods. Because of the above two characteristics of classical thought, the author concludes that the classical welfare views have been misunderstood; that they were not (primarily) anticipators of modern welfare theory, with its emphasis on the appropriate allocation of resources, but had an entirely different orientation (expanding total output, facilitating capital accumulation, and the like), which he has discovered (Introd. and chap. i). Myint claims that his interpretation enables one to understand classical doctrine as a coherent system, while the "usual view" (that their central ' A review note of Hla Myint, Theories of Welfare Economics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,