Arthur Cecil Pigou is a preeminent economist who is best known for his book "The Economics of Welfare" published in 1920. In this book he introduced the concept of externalities which he demonstrated could be corrected by the imposition of a tax now known as a Pigovian tax. His book, "The Economics of Stationary States" published in 1935 is lesser known and I suspect this book had little impact even in the early years after publication. For example, I borrowed this book from the University of Auckland library in 1978. My name is the third on the library card and the last person to have borrowed the book before me did so in 1936. Even Pigou himself felt apologetic about devoting an entire book to Stationary States as follows in his Introduction: "... in our imagined stationary state no less than in the actual world, the maximum principle is at work; and the fact that the environing conditions are moderately simple enables us to grasp its significance with sureness and precision ...This is my excuse, if excuse be needed, for publishing a book of this character. ... the analysis worked out in this book cannot by itself make any large contribution to the study of real life. It provides a taking-off place, but little more; a first stage only, which needs extensive supplement. The building is more than the foundation. But, nonetheless, to take pains over the foundations is not to waste time."

A number of authors started to write about the need for a Steady State Economy from the 1940s onwards and some have cited earlier authors such as Plato, John Stuart Mill, and John Maynard Keynes who had written brief positive notes on the concept of Steady State. Very few authors of Steady State Economics have cited Arthur Cecil Pigou and by doing so acknowledged his contribution. Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen is one of the few who has cited Pigou in "Energy & Economic Myths" published in 1975. Martin Currie and Ian Steedman also cite Pigou in their book "Wrestling with Time: Problems in Economic Theory" published in 1990.

In 2012 Mark Anderson wrote an 8 page history on the concept of Steady State in his publication "Economics, Steady State". He wrote extensively about John Stuart Mill's contribution followed immediately by Paul Samuelson's journal publication "Dynamics, Statics, and the Stationary States" which was published in 1943. Anderson makes no mention at all of Pigou or his book "The Economics of Stationary States" published in 1935 or the journal publications “The Classical Stationary State" and "Economic Progress in a Stable Environment" which were published in 1943 and 1947 respectively.

Has any economist written a peer reviewed critique and identified any flaws in A.C. Pigou's book, "The Economics of Stationary States", published by Macmillan in 1935, and is Pigou indeed the first economist to publish in depth on Steady State Economics?