DOCSLIB.ORG

The Economics of W.S.Jevons

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Economics of W.S.Jevons THE ECONOMICS OF W.S.JEVONS Sandra Peart London and New York First published 1996 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1996 Sandra Peart All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by an electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Peart, Sandra. The economics of W.S.Jevons/Sandra Peart. p. cm.—(Routledge studies in the history of economics; 9) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Jevons, William Stanley, 1835–1882. 2. Economists—Great Britain—Biography. 3. Economics—Great Britain—History—19th century. I. Title. II. Series. HB103.J5P4 1996 95–51459 330.157–dc20 CIP ISBN 0-203-02249-1 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-20445-X (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-06713-8 Truth is the iron hand within the velvety glove, and the one who has truth & good logic on his side will ultimately overcome millions who are led by confused and contradictory ideas. (William Stanley Jevons, Miscellaneous Notes on J.S.Mill’s Logical Method, JA6/5/43) CONTENTS Acknowledgements xi Abbreviations xii 1 INTRODUCTION 1 General themes Appendix 1.1 Chronology of Jevons’s life 7 Appendix 1.2 Chronology of Jevons’s works 12 Part I Macroeconomic concerns: growth and stability 2 JEVONS’S THEORY OF ECONOMIC GROWTH 18 Introduction: the early years 18 The Coal Question 20 On population growth 21 The empirical analysis and policy recommendations 29 Conclusions 32 Appendix 2.1 Coal consumption 37 Appendix 2.2 Population data 39 3 SUNSPOTS AND EXPECTATIONS 41 Jevons’s theory of economic fluctuations Introduction 41 Early recognitions of the role of expectations 43 Jevons’s early analysis of fluctuations 47 Jevons’s sunspot theory 51 Economic policy and fluctuations 56 Critical evaluations of Jevons’s sunspot theory 59 viii Conclusions 62 Part II Microeconomic theory 4 JEVONS’S THEORY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 65 Origins, scope and purpose Introduction 65 Jevons’s intellectual heritage: the ‘Prefaces’ of 1871 67 and 1879 Jevons’s Brief Account of a Mathematical Theory 70 Scope and purpose of the Theory of Political Economy 73 Conclusions 79 5 JEVONS’S THEORY OF EXCHANGE 81 Introduction 81 The laws of utility 82 The theory of exchange 88 Implications and ‘practical manifestations’ of the 97 theory Conclusions 101 Appendix 5.1 Physics and neoclassical economics 103 6 PRODUCTION 104 Introduction 104 Disutility: the theory of labour 106 Relation to the ‘recognized doctrines of political 112 economy’ Theory of rent 115 Capitalization 117 Conclusions: the profit-wage relationship 120 Part III Economic policy 7 JEVONS AND UTILITARIANISM 124 Introduction 124 Bentham, J.S.Mill and utility 125 ix Jevons’s denial of Mill’s standard 131 Presumptive guidelines for economic policy 135 Jevons’s debt to Mill 138 Conclusions 140 8 JEVONS’S ANALYSIS OF POLICY 141 Introduction 141 Specific applications of policy analysis 142 Trade unions and co-operation 146 On education: the problem of intertemporal decision- 148 making Late nineteenth-century developments on utility 150 measurement Conclusions 152 Part IV Methodology 9 THE RISE OF EMPIRICAL METHODS 156 Jevons’s methodology of economics Introduction 156 Of causation and chance 158 The methodology of J.S.Mill 160 Jevons’s methodology 166 Conclusions 174 10 JEVONS’S EMPIRICAL STUDIES 176 Introduction 176 The variation of prices 177 The condition of coinage 183 The Davenant Law 185 The sunspot cycle 187 Some reactions to Jevons’s methodology 191 Conclusions 193 Appendix 10.1 Jevons’s commodity groups, enlarged sample 195 x Appendix 10.2 The currency wear calculations 200 Appendix 10.3 The Davenant Corn Law 201 Appendix 10.4 Jevons’s 1875 Buys-Ballot Table 202 11 CONCLUSION 204 Notes 214 References 283 Index 295 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is a pleasure to express my gratitude to those persons who helped shape this work. I am indebted to my thesis supervisor, Samuel Hollander, for his unwavering encouragement of my early research. I have always been warmly received at the History of Economic Thought Workshop in Toronto. Discussions on those occasions with Nancy Churchman, Bob Dimand, Mary Ann Dimand, Allan Hynes, Richard Kleer, and Brenda Spotton, improved the formulation of my ideas. I offer my gratitude also to those who have read portions of my research: Tim Alborn, Nahid Aslanbeigi, R.D.C.Black, Sam Bostaph, Martin Gross, Craig Heinicke, Suzanne Helborn, James P.Henderson, Abraham Hirsch, Susan Howson, Richard Kleer, Judy Klein, David Laidler, Bruce Larson, Trevor Levere, Ingrid Rima, Margaret Schabas, W.D.Thweah, Michael White, and Nancy Wulwick. Dr Peter Nockles and his staff at the Jevons Archives proved indefatigable in their willingness to carry around boxes of material at my request. This research has received much financial support along the way. My graduate studies were generously supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, as well as the University of Toronto, and the Ontario Government. The College of William and Mary, and Baldwin-Wallace College both provided assistance in the form of grants to support the research. A George Gund Foundation grant supported the very efficient and always cheerful help of my research assistant, Ms Suzi Hunt. The National Endowment for the Humanities supported the research, and provided funds for travel to the Jevons Archives, in Manchester, England. Craig Heinicke, and, for the past twenty-two months, Nathan Casey Heinicke- Peart, have been a source of strength and joy; to them I owe the deepest debt of gratitude. ABBREVIATIONS ASF A Serious Fall in the Value of Gold Ascertained, and its Social Effects set forth (1863) BAAS British Association for the Advancement of Science CR Contemporary Review CW Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (1962-) HES History of Economics Society HOPE History of Political Economy ICF Investigations in Currency and Finance (1884) JA Jevons Archives JEL Journal of Economic Literature LPMJ The London, Edinburgh and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science Manchester The Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies School MME Money and the Mechanism of Exchange (1875) MSR Methods of Social Reform, and other Papers (1883) MT ‘Brief Account of a General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy’ (1862) P&C Papers and Correspondence of William Stanley Jevons (1972– 81) PE The Principles of Economics and Other Papers (1905) PPE Principles of Political Economy by John Stuart Mill (1865) PS The Principles of Science (1874) SRL The State in Relation to Labour (1882) TCQ The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation and the Probable Exhaustion of our Coal Mines (1865) TPE The Theory of Political Economy (1871) 1 INTRODUCTION General themes ‘William Stanley Jevons, Thinker’. Such is the title of a newsclipping that commemorates the fifty-year anniversary of Jevons’s death (JA6/50/43). Reviews of his Letters and Journal, published posthumously in 1886, find that he was ‘above all things, a mathematician’, ‘undoubtedly the foremost logician of his time’, or, quite simply, ‘A Great Statistician’.1 Jevons was also, of course, a ‘pioneer of modern economics’2 and economists today most often come to know his work with marginal utility theory. But his interests encompassed policy issues as diverse as child care for working mothers and slum landlords, as well as the methodological procedures appropriate to the discipline. Jevons’s research into the coal question and British manufacturing supremacy, and the effect of gold discoveries on the value of gold, was highly acclaimed during his lifetime; Léon Walras learned of Jevons’s work on index numbers long before he became acquainted with the theory of exchange.3 From an early age, Jevons was driven by an intense desire to be, as he put it in an 1857 letter to his two sisters, Henrietta and Lucy, a ‘powerful good in the world’.4 Early on, also, his talent for measurement became evident and was recognized by peers. Social science, ‘the study of Man in society’, attracted his efforts; and in social science he called for measurement, approximation, and quantification of hypotheses. He developed new techniques of data combination and manipulation, insisting that the scientist attack observations using ‘wide averages’.5 Jevons’s contributions, both in terms of methodological recommendations contained primarily in The Principles of Science (Chapter 9), as well as the actual procedures he used in empirical studies (Chapter 10), proved fundamentally important to the subsequent development of empirical techniques in economics.6 William Stanley was born and raised in Liverpool, at the heart of industrial England.7 The family was cultured, Unitarian, and, at least until 1848, well-to-do. His father, Thomas Jevons [1791–1855], worked in the iron trade and was an innovator in the use of iron for shipbuilding;8 in 1834, Thomas published a work on reforming the criminal justice system, and in 1840, he published a piece on the Corn Laws.9 2 INTRODUCTION Jevons’s mother, Mary Anne Roscoe [1795–1845], shared a cultured life with her father, William Roscoe [1753–1831], until her marriage to Thomas in 1821. She published two books of her own poetry, and introduced William Stanley to the subject of political economy when he was just eight years old, using Archbishop Whately’s textbook, Easy Lessons on Money Matters for the use of Young People.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Utility, Ethics and Behavior
    Journal of Academic and Business Ethics Utility, ethics and behavior Marcela Parada-Contzen Universidad de Concepcion-Chile Jose R. Parada-Daza Universidad de Concepcion-Chile ABSTRACT This essay has the following hypothesis as its foundation: a new function taking a more global perspective can be developed based on the analytical economic conception of utility. However, this new hypothesis/perspective considers that individuals are driven to act by economic as well as social, religious, ethical, and other reasons. Thus, the crux of this exposition is an analysis of the concept of utility and its application towards daily acts. The essay also deals with the philosophical aspects of utility and its paradoxes and analyzes utility from the perspective of a biological being. This analysis is broader and includes the simultaneous actions of an economic human and a complex human. Keyword: Utility function, Emotional well-being, wealth, ethics, “homo economicus”, weights. Utility, ethics and behavior, Page 1 Journal of Academic and Business Ethics INTRODUCTION The study of what motivates individual acts, especially regarding economic decisions, offers an intellectual challenge for the human sciences. In economics, this matter has been studied using a methodology of normative analysis known as the utility function, in which people seek to obtain the maximum degree of satisfaction. Herein, utility is what each person obtains from a certain level of wealth or consumption. For those not instructed in economics, this idea creates distrust and is blamed for generating a society of individualistic and insatiable beings. Grounds for both supporting and distrusting this approach have been given. The utility function is an intellectual device for explaining personal economic behavior.
    [Show full text]
  • Utility and Happiness in a Prosperous Society
    Utility and Happiness in a Prosperous Society Yoram Kirsh1,2 1 Institute for Policy Analysis, The Open University of Israel 2 Department of Natural Sciences, The Open University of Israel Version: March 30, 2017 Keywords: Prosperous society, Utility, Happiness economics JEL Classification: D63, D64, I31 This article is scheduled to be a chapter in a book on the economics of the prosperous society. My claim is that there is a gap between economic theory and economic reality in the western world, since economics was traditionally established to deal with conditions of scarcity. As many of our current problems are associated with abundance rather than with scarcity, new tools are needed to tackle the modern dilemmas. For a definition of a prosperous society, please see the previous chapter (Unemployment and Job Creation in a Prosperous Economy). I would be grateful for any suggestion or comment. OUI – Institute for Policy Analysis Working paper series, No. 37 – 2017 * P AuthorPU contact details: ProfessorU (Emeritus) Yoram Kirsh, Department of Natural Sciences, The Open University of Israel, 1 University Rd., P.O.B. 808, Ra'anana 43107, Israel. Cell Phone:. 972-532-209726, For correspondence– yoramk2TU @openu.ac.il U2T 2 Abstract Some examples of human behavior which seem paradoxical or irrational in view of the utility maximization principle can be explained as rational if we distinguish between two types of utility. The first type is the conventional utility – cardinal or ordinal – which the rational economic actors are expected to maximize. The second type is connected to actions which fulfill some psychological needs and might appear irrational by cost- effective calculations.
    [Show full text]
  • The End of Economics, Or, Is
    THE END OF ECONOMICS, OR, IS UTILITARIANISM FINISHED? By John D. Mueller James Madison Program Fellow Fellow of The Lehrman Institute President, LBMC LLC Princeton University, 127 Corwin Hall, 15 April 2002 Summary. According to Lionel Robbins’ classic definition, “Economics is the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means that have alternate uses.” Yet most modern economists assume that economic choice involves only the means and not to the ends of human action. The reason seems to be that most modern economists are ignorant of the history of their own discipline before Adam Smith or Jeremy Bentham. Leading economists like Gary Becker attempt to explain all human behavior, including love and hate, as a maximization of “utility.” But historically and logically, an adequate description of economic choice has always required both a ranking of persons as ends and a ranking of scarce goods as means. What is missing from modern economics is an adequate description of the ranking of persons as ends. This is reflected in the absence of a satisfactory microeconomic explanation (for example, within the household) as to how goods are distributed to their final users, and in an overemphasis at the political level on an “individualistic social welfare function,” by which policymakers are purported to add up the preferences of a society of selfish individuals and determine all distribution from the government downwards, as if the nation or the world were one large household. As this “hole” in economic theory is recognized, an army of “neo-scholastic” economists will find full employment for the first few decades of the 21st Century, busily rewriting the Utilitarian “economic approach to human behavior” that dominated the last three decades of the 20th Century.
    [Show full text]
  • William Roscoe - Poems
    Classic Poetry Series William Roscoe - poems - Publication Date: 2012 Publisher: Poemhunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive William Roscoe() He was born in Liverpool, where his father, a market gardener, kept a public house called the Bowling Green at Mount Pleasant. Roscoe left school at the age of twelve, having learned all that his schoolmaster could teach. He assisted his father in the work of the garden, but spent his leisure time on reading and study. "This mode of life," he says, "gave health and vigour to my body, and amusement and instruction to my mind; and to this day I well remember the delicious sleep which succeeded my labors, from which I was again called at an early hour. If I were now asked whom I consider to be the happiest of the human race, I should answer, those who cultivate the earth by their own hands." At fifteen he began to look for a suitable career. A month's trial of bookselling was unsuccessful, and in 1769 he was articled to a solicitor. Although a diligent student of law, he continued to read the classics, and made the acquaintance with the language and literature of Italy which was to dominate his life. His poem, Mount Pleasant, was written when he was sixteen, and together with other verses, now forgotten, won the esteem of good critics. In 1774 he went into business as a lawyer, and in 1781 married Jane, second daughter of William Griffies, a Liverpool tradesman; they had seven sons and three daughters. Roscoe had the courage to denounce the African slave trade in his native town, where much of the wealth came from slavery.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Utility and Happiness Miles Kimball and Robert Willis1 University of Michigan October 30, 2006 Abstract: Psychologists Have D
    Utility and Happiness Miles Kimball and Robert Willis1 University of Michigan October 30, 2006 Abstract: Psychologists have developed effective survey methods of measuring how happy people feel at a given time. The relationship between how happy a person feels and utility is an unresolved question. Existing work in Economics either ignores happiness data or assumes that felt happiness is more or less the same thing as flow utility. The approach we propose in this paper steers a middle course between the two polar views that “happiness is irrelevant to Economics” and the view that “happiness is a sufficient statistic for utility.” We argue that felt happiness is not the same thing as flow utility, but that it does have a systematic relationship to utility. In particular, we propose that happiness is the sum of two components: (1) elation--or short-run happiness--which depends on recent news about lifetime utility and (2) baseline mood--or long-run happiness--which is a subutility function much like health, entertainment, or nutrition. In principle, all of the usual techniques of price theory apply to baseline mood, but the application of those techniques is complicated by the fact that many people may not know the true household production function for baseline mood. If this theory is on target, there are two reasons data on felt happiness is important for Economics. First, short-run happiness in response to news can give important information about preferences. Second, long-run happiness is important for economic welfare in the same way as other higher-order goods such as health, entertainment, or nutrition.
    [Show full text]
  • Marginal Revolution
    MARGINAL REVOLUTION It took place in the later half of the 19th century Stanley Jevons in England, Carl Menger in Austria and Leon walras at Lausanne, are generally regarded as the founders of marginalist school Hermann Heinrich Gossen of Germany is considered to be the anticipator of the marginalist school The term ‘Marginal Revolution’ is applied to the writings of the above economists because they made fundamental changes in the apparatus of economic analysis They started looking at some of the important economic problems from an altogether new angle different from that of classical economists Marginal economists has been used to analyse the single firm and its behavior, the market for a single product and the formation of individual prices Marginalism dominated Western economic thought for nearly a century until it was challenged by Keynesian attack in 1936 (keynesian economics shifted the sphere of enquiry from micro economics to macro economics where the problems of the economy as a whole are analysed) The provocation for the emergence of marginalist school was provided by the interpretation of classical doctrines especially the labour theory of value and ricardian theory of rent by the socialists Socialists made use of classical theories to say things which were not the intention of the creators of those theories So the leading early marginalists felt the need for thoroughly revising the classical doctrines especially the theory of value They thought by rejecting the labour theory of value and by advocating the marginal utility theory of value, they could strike at the theoretical basis of socialism Economic Ideas of Marginalist School This school concentrated on the ‘margin’ to explain economic phenomena.
    [Show full text]
  • Energy As a Factor of Production: Historical Roots in the American Institutionalist Context Antoine Missemer, Franck Nadaud
    Energy as a Factor of Production: Historical Roots in the American Institutionalist Context Antoine Missemer, Franck Nadaud To cite this version: Antoine Missemer, Franck Nadaud. Energy as a Factor of Production: Historical Roots in the American Institutionalist Context. Energy Economics, Elsevier, 2020, 86, pp.104706. 10.1016/j.eneco.2020.104706. halshs-02467734 HAL Id: halshs-02467734 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-02467734 Submitted on 26 Feb 2021 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. - Authors’s post-print - - published in Energy Economics (2020), 86, 104706 - ENERGY AS A FACTOR OF PRODUCTION: HISTORICAL ROOTS IN THE AMERICAN INSTITUTIONALIST CONTEXT - * Antoine MISSEMER † Franck NADAUD - Full reference: MISSEMER, Antoine and NADAUD, Franck. 2020. “Energy as a Factor of Production: Historical Roots in the American Institutionalist Context”. Energy Economics, 86, 104706. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2020.104706] The pagination of the published version is indicated in the margin. - Abstract The relationship between energy and economic output is today discussed through the decoupling issue. A pioneering historical attempt to measure this relationship can be found in contributions by F. G. Tryon et al. at the Brookings Institution in the 1920s-1930s, in the American institutionalist context.
    [Show full text]
  • On Ordinal Utility, Cardinal Utility, and Random Utility
    This is a repository copy of On ordinal utility, cardinal utility, and random utility . White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/2544/ Article: Batley, R. (2007) On ordinal utility, cardinal utility, and random utility. Theory and Decision, Online. ISSN 1573-7187 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11238-007-9046-2 Reuse See Attached Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ White Rose Research Online http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Institute of Transport Studies University of Leeds This is an author produced version of a paper published in Theory and Decision Journal. It has been peer reviewed but does not include the final publishers formatting and pagination. White Rose Repository URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/2544/ Published paper Batley, Richard (2007) On ordinal utility, cardinal utility, and random utility. Theory and Decision, Online First, May 2007 White Rose Consortium ePrints Repository [email protected] Onordinalutility,cardinalutility,andrandomutility RichardBatley InstituteforTransportStudies,UniversityofLeeds,UK [email protected] ABSTRACT ThoughtheRandomUtilityModel(RUM)wasconceivedentirelyintermsof ordinal utility, the apparatus through which it is widely practised exhibits properties of cardinal utility.The adoption of cardinal utility as a working operation of ordinal is perfectly valid, provided interpretations drawnfrom thatoperationremainfaithfultoordinalutility.Thepaperconsiderswhether the latter requirement holds true for several measurements commonly derivedfromRUM.Inparticularitisfoundthatmeasurementsofconsumer surplus change may depart from ordinal utility, and exploit the cardinality inherentinthepracticalapparatus.
    [Show full text]
  • Expected Utility Theory
    Expected Utility Theory Simon Grant Timothy Van Zandt Rice University INSEAD 22 November 2007 This is a chapter for the forthcoming Handbook of Rational and Social Choice, Paul Anand, Prasanta Pattanaik, and Clemens Puppe, eds., Oxford University Press, 2008. We review classic normative expected utility theory. Our goal is to frame the subsequent chapters (which consider more modern extensions to and deviations from this classic theory) in a way that is accessible to the non- specialist but also useful to the specialist. We start from scratch with a revealed preference approach to the existence of a utility function. We then present the mathematical structure of additive and linear utility representations and their ax- iomatizations, in the context of abstract choice theory and using intertemporal choice as a source of examples. We are thus able to focus on this mathematical structure without the interference of the specific interpretation and notation for decision under uncertainty. Furthermore, this approach allows us to focus on the interpretation of the axioms when we turn to decision under uncertainty. Contents 1. Introduction 1 2. Descriptive, prescriptive, and normative theories 2 3. A review of choice, preferences, and utility 3 4. Hidden assumption: Consequentialism 3 5. Weak axiom of revealed preference 4 6. From preferences to choice rules 6 7. Infinite choice sets and continuity assumptions 7 8. Additive utility 8 9. Linear preferences 12 10. Cardinal uniformity across factors 15 11. States of nature and acts 20 12. Sure-thing principle and additivity 22 13. Lotteries 27 14. Subjective expected utility without objective probabilities 31 15.
    [Show full text]
  • Where Keynes Went Wrong
    Praise for Where Keynes Went Wrong “[An] impassioned . and . much needed book. In plain prose, . Hunter Lewis . begins by patiently walking us through precisely what Keynes said . then reveals why Keynes’s work is ‘remarkably unsupported by evidence or logic.’ Lewis does much more besides, showing how Keynesianism has lived in the minds and hearts of politicians, with disastrous results.” —Gene Epstein, Barron’s “Lewis has exposed with unmatched clarity the lineaments of Keynes’s system and enabled us to see exactly its disabling defects. Keynes defied common sense, unable to sustain the brilliant para- doxes that his fertile intellect constantly devised. Lewis’s book is an ideal guide to Keynes’s dangerous and destructive economics. .” —David Gordon, LewRockwell.com “Just what the world needs, and just in time. Keynes is demolished and his quack system refuted. But this wonderful book does more. It restores clear thinking and common sense to their rightful places in the economic policy debate. Three cheers for Hunter Lewis!” —James Grant, Editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer “Hunter Lewis has written a splendid book called Where Keynes We nt Wrong. The dissection of the English economist who died in 1946 is especially timely, given that the past two administra- tions and the current one are identical in believing wholeheart- edly in . key Keynesian dogma.” —Patrick McIlheran, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “[This] compelling, powerful, and extremely readable book . is fantastic. ‘Must’ reading.” —Kevin Price, CBS and CNN Radio and BizPlusBlog “Lewis has done a service, even if in the negative, of concisely and critically summarizing Keynes’s economic theories, and his book will make readers think.” —Library Journal “[This] highly readable .
    [Show full text]
  • Journal of Energy History Revue D'histoire De L'énergie Les Économistes Et La Fin Des Énergies Fossiles (Antoine Missemer
    Journal of Energy History Revue d’histoire de l’énergie AUTHOR Antonin Pottier Les économistes et la fin des Centre International de énergies fossiles (Antoine Recherche sur l’Environnement et le Missemer, 2017) Développement (CIRED), École des Hautes Études en Bibliographic reference Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Antoine Missemer, Les économistes et la fin des énergies fos- France siles (1865-1931) (Paris : Garnier, 2017). POST DATE Abstract 06/02/2020 In Les économistes et la fin des énergies fossiles, ISSUE NUMBER Antoine Missemer explores the different ways by which JEHRHE #2 economists have made fossil fuels an object of eco- SECTION nomic analysis, in the period that runs from The Coal Reviews Question by William Stanley Jevons to Harold Hotelling’s KEYWORDS 1931 paper. He is interested in the fear of resource Coal, Oil, Industry, exhaustion and its impact on industrial development, Knowledge, Public policy but also reports on the theories that pay attention to DOI the economic activities of fossil fuels producers. in progress Plan of the article TO CITE THIS ARTICLE → The Coal Question as an autonomising work Antonin Pottier, “Les → Discussion of the autonomisation thesis économistes et la fin des → American conservationism énergies fossiles (Antoine → Nature as an asset Missemer, 2017)”, Journal of → A retrospective object? Energy History/Revue d’Histoire de l’Énergie [Online], n°2, published 06 february 2020, consulted XXX, URL: http:// energyhistory.eu/node/123 ISSN 2649-3055 JEHRHE #2 | REVIEWS P. 2 POTTIER | LES ÉCONOMISTES ET LA FIN DES ÉNERGIES FOSSILES (ANTOINE MISSEMER, 2017) analysis? Antoine Missemer seeks to engage with these questions in his research.
    [Show full text]
  • Economics, Psychology, and the History of Demand Theory
    Economics, Psychology, and the History of Consumer Choice Theory Paper for Conference on The History of Recent Economics (HISRECO) University of Paris X June 22-24, 2007 D. Wade Hands Department of Economics University of Puget Sound Tacoma, WA 98416 USA [email protected] May 2007 Version 2.0 13,693 Words Draft for discussion purposes only. Please do not quote. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy Conference in Istanbul, Turkey, in November 2006 and at the Whittemore School of Business and Economics, University of New Hampshire, in February 2007. I would like to thank John Davis, Harro Maas, and a number of people in the audience at Istanbul and UNH for helpful comments. 0. Introduction The relationship between psychology and consumer choice theory has been long and tumultuous: a veritable seesaw of estrangement and warm reconciliation. Starting with the British neoclassicism of Jevons and Edgeworth, and moving to contemporary economic theory, it appears that psychology was quite in, then clearly out, and now (possibly) coming back in. If one moves farther back in time and takes the view that the classical tradition was grounded in a natural – and thus non-social, non-mental, and non– psychological – order (Schabas 2005), then the scorecard becomes out, in, out, and (possibly) back in. A tumultuous relationship indeed. The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical examination of this turbulent relationship. The argument is presented in three parts. The first section provides a summary of the standard story about the relationship between psychology and consumer choice theory from the early neoclassicals to the present time.
    [Show full text]