Fossil Fuels in Economic Theory- Back to the 19th century British Debates

Abstract

The interest of economists in fossil fuel exhaustion dates back to the mid-19th century, when, in Great Britain, W. Stanley Jevons published his 1865 essay on coal. In the subsequent decades, fossil fuels were considered with ambivalence: sometimes as a new theoretical and practical priority, sometimes as a secondary issue to be studied in standard frameworks. This paper explores, through the example of the mining rent, how fossil fuels were (partially) incorporated into economic theory at the time. It also explains why the original British view was finally relegated to the background in the early 20th century, when American economists took part in the discussions.

Keywords

• fossil fuels
• history of economic thought
• mining rent
• Jevons
• marginalism.