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

Antoine Missemer (1, 2)

1 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
2 CIRED - centre international de recherche sur l'environnement et le développement

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.

Mots clés: marginalism; Jevons; mining rent; history of economic thought; fossil fuels

Domaines: Economies et finances; Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences; Histoire

Antoine Missemer. Fossil Fuels in Economic Theory - Back to the 19th century British Debates. Revue française de civilisation britannique, 2018, XXIII (3). ⟨hal-01793364⟩