Stanley Jevons Research Articles

Victorians and Numbers: Statistics and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain by Lawrence Goldman

<i>Victorians and Numbers: Statistics and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain</i> by Lawrence Goldman

Differential Calculus and its Application in Economics- A Study with Reference to Consumer Demand Theory

Calculus is one of the important components of mathematical tools used in economics. This enables understanding, improving and problem-solving tools for economic variables. The mathematical analysis contains differential calculus and integral calculus. Calculus is mostly expressed in functions and derivatives. The two-consumer demand theories are cardinal and ordinal. The former is the marginal utility approach and the latter is indifference curve analysis popularised by authors like Gossen (1854), William Jevons (1871), Leon Walras (1874), Carl Marshall (1890), Menger (1950), Hicks (1956), Pareto (1909), P.A. Samuelson (1949), and Robbins (1984) etc. These models analysed the relationship between the price of a commodity and the quantity demanded of the same commodity for deriving individual and market demand curves. The coefficient of price, income and cross elasticities and price, income and substitution effects are also part of these theories.

Pretense of Mathematizing Human Action

This article tries to understand how the Economic Science started a research program identified as the Neoclassical program, founded under the pretense of introducing mathematics as the solely language admitted for elaborating economic theory. This project produced another pretense, that was the endeavour of enclosing human action into different schemas that were compatible with the mathematical instrumental used by the program. We identify two critical moments of the Neoclassical program reshaped the way we understand human action: the pleasure-seeker behavior moment, introduced by William Jevons with the assistance of Jeremy Bentham and the second, called the utility-function era, the one that accompany us until today. Finally, we present some reflections about how a new outlook, based in Aristotelic insights could be very helpful in understanding and studying better human action.

The rebound effect and the challenge of moving beyond fossil fuels: A review of empirical and theoretical research

AbstractWilliam Stanley Jevons identified what has come to be known as the Jevons paradox: the observation that improvements in energy efficiency are often connected with rising, not falling, energy consumption. This insight informs the subsequent economic concept of the “rebound effect” and the expansive research investigating this relationship. We provide an overview of key empirical research, which establishes that large rebounds in energy consumption connected with rising energy efficiency are common across various units of analysis, including the national, subnational (e.g., states/provinces/cities; power plants), and household levels. We then focus on the range of theoretical arguments that have been put forward to explain why rebounds occur in varying contexts, with particular consideration of implications for efforts to move away from fossil fuels. We emphasize the important distinction between direct effects, indirect effects, and economy‐wide effects in regard to rebounds, particularly those connected with macro‐structural forces, for understanding the causes and implications of the Jevons paradox.This article is categorized under: The Carbon Economy and Climate Mitigation &gt; Decarbonizing Energy and/or Reducing Demand

Making Inferences from Index Numbers (1860–1914)

Index numbers are indirect measurements as well as composite quantities that present particular inferential challenges to the measurer and their intended audiences. The early history of the use of index numbers in British economics (ca. 1860–1914) shows that making inferences using this measuring instrument was rife with problems. Economists grappled with multiple “inferential gaps” in order to make inferences from index numbers. The extent to which these gaps could be bridged depended on the theoretical frameworks and measurement strategies used. However, it is also evident that some inferential issues confronting economists were ideological or political in nature. Two case studies are examined, Stanley Jevons’s price index and the Board of Trade’s cost-of-living index, that sharpen the focus on the accuracy of index numbers. What did index numbers really capture about the deterioration of the monetary standard or standard of living of the working classes? By situating the index numbers within the broader ecology in which they were constructed, the article shows that making inferences was not just a heuristic process (one that eliminated gaps by getting the estimations right) but a cognitive one as well (one that people could accept as being “fit for purpose”).

Provincializing economics: Jevons, Marshall and the colonial imaginaries of free trade

Contemporary economics speaks about trade in the familiar abstractions of comparative advantage, tracing the modern formulation of the case for free trade made in terms of welfare maximization to late-Victorian economists like W. Stanley Jevons and Alfred Marshall. Though Jevons and Marshall did formalize theories that treat countries as if they are abstract individuals, a closer reading suggests that their thinking on trade was informed by colonial imaginaries of civilization and race. The economics invented by Jevons and Marshall manages claims about human sameness and difference in a particularly colonial fashion. They both slide readily and uncertainly between the idea that parts of humanity are permanently lesser races and explaining lesser humans as simply developmentally backward. The latter might achieve full physiological and moral humanity over time through the improvements (and attendant but necessary suffering) administered by Empire via market competition. They sometimes point to a common set of desires and calculating capacities, but never so decisively as contemporary economics. Jevons takes these commonalities as the basis of a quantitative science of economics, but doubts their empirical universality. Marshall sees these traits as distinctively modern and achieved only via the rise of modern institutions. By contrast, contemporary economics insists on the universality of these traits, claiming for economics a distinctive “analytical egalitarianism.” But difference is only defined away by fiat in contemporary textbooks and where difference arises, as in the problem of uneven development, the colonial impulse of economics remains. The connection to Jevons’ and Marshall’s own colonial management of difference becomes sharply visible. To return to Jevons and Marshall allows us to provincialize economics.

Emek Değer Teorisi ve Fayda Değer Teorisinin Karşılaştırılmalı Analizi

The issue of value and what have been the source of value has been the subject of research for economists and thinkers for a long time. Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx did not consider the use value of a good. They argued that considering the exchange value of a good, the Exchange value of that good was determined by the amount of labor time spent in its production. Athough these economists approached the theory of labor value with different perspectives, they reached a common consensus that the source of value is labor. Another current that contributes to the theory of value is the theory of utility value led by W. Stanley Jevons, Leon Walras, Carl Menger and Alfred Marshall. In this study theory of labor value and theory of utility value are compared and their validity is discussed today. It is thought that the value affected by many variables in the economic system cannot be concluded from such a complex structure that it can only be determined by labor or just benefit. It is also considered that there are many variables that affect the value of good other than labor and benefit.

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

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.

King Coal Rules: Accepting or Refusing Coal Dependency in Victorian Britain

Fears of coal shortage emerged in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, when coal became not only the basis of British people’s daily lives, but also the staple of their economy. At the beginning of the 1870s, these fears intensified, following the publication of Stanley Jevons’s book The Coal Question in 1865 and a very long and difficult coal famine. This made it more complicated to put aside the fears of shortage. That nothing was finally done to tackle this issue can be explained by a strong faith in science (to solve all problems) and in free trade (even though it began to be fiercely contested), but also by a sense of doom: getting out of a system entirely based on coal demanded efforts that seemed overwhelming compared to the immediate dangers of shortage or even pollution.

Rational Choice Theory or Pretense? The Claims, Equivalences, and Analogies of the “Economic Approach to Human Behavior”

The article argues and demonstrates that classical–neoclassical economics generally does not pretend or claim that its principles apply to domains beyond the economy, specifically wealth, and does not equate the economic and the noneconomic, and the rational and the nonrational. By contrast, the “economic approach to human behavior” or “rational choice theory” precisely does this to legitimize itself by invoking classical–neoclassical economics as supreme authority and its representatives as venerable precursors. The article reveals the economic approach to human behavior as a set of grand theoretical and methodological claims, equivalences, and analogies from the standpoint of conventional economics itself, as well as sociology and other social sciences. It identifies and examines certain indicative instances of such tendencies. The article aims to contribute to understanding better the relations—or rather lack thereof—between conventional economics and contemporary economic and sociological rational choice theory. The economic approach to human behavior is not new, even outside the market sector. The rational choice model provides the most promising basis presently available for a unified approach to the analysis of the social world by scholars from different social sciences. — Gary Becker With respect to those parts of human conduct of which wealth is not even the principal object, to these political economy does not pretend that its conclusions are applicable. — John S. Mill But economy does not treat of all human motives. There are motives nearly always present with us, arising from conscience, compassion, or from some moral or religious source, which economy cannot and does not pretend to treat. These will remain to us as outstanding and disturbing forces; they must be treated, if at all, by other appropriate branches of knowledge. — William Jevons A science, therefore, based on the hypothesis (of universal rationality) would yield a general form of the social phenomenon having little or no contact with reality … — Vilfredo Pareto

Energy Rebound as a Potential Threat to a Low-Carbon Future: Findings from a New Exergy-Based National-Level Rebound Approach

150 years ago, Stanley Jevons introduced the concept of energy rebound: that anticipated energy efficiency savings may be “taken back” by behavioural responses. This is an important issue today because, if energy rebound is significant, this would hamper the effectiveness of energy efficiency policies aimed at reducing energy use and associated carbon emissions. However, empirical studies which estimate national energy rebound are rare and, perhaps as a result, rebound is largely ignored in energy-economy models and associated policy. A significant difficulty lies in the components of energy rebound assessed in empirical studies: most examine direct and indirect rebound in the static economy, excluding potentially significant rebound of the longer term structural response of the national economy. In response, we develop a novel exergy-based approach to estimate national energy rebound for the UK and US (1980–2010) and China (1981–2010). Exergy—as “available energy”—allows a consistent, thermodynamic-based metric for national-level energy efficiency. We find large energy rebound in China, suggesting that improvements in China’s energy efficiency may be associated with increased energy consumption (“backfire”). Conversely, we find much lower (partial) energy rebound for the case of the UK and US. These findings support the hypothesis that producer-sided economies (such as China) may exhibit large energy rebound, reducing the effectiveness of energy efficiency, unless other policy measures (e.g., carbon taxes) are implemented. It also raises the prospect we need to deploy renewable energy sources faster than currently planned, if (due to rebound) energy efficiency policies cannot deliver the scale of energy reduction envisaged to meet climate targets.

Felicidad y economía: la felicidad como utilidad en la economía

&lt;p align="justify"&gt;Este artículo presenta el concepto de &lt;em&gt;felicidad&lt;/em&gt; abordado desde las perspectivas científica, filosófica, psicológica y económica. Ofrece una mirada histórica de la felicidad a lo largo del pensamiento económico, partiendo desde Adam Smith, en 1776, y continuando con el pensamiento de reconocidos economistas como Jeremy Bentham, J. S. Mill, William Jevons, León Walras, Carl Menger, Paúl Samuelson, entre otros. En este recorrido se incorpora el concepto de &lt;em&gt;utilidad&lt;/em&gt; y se analiza cómo, durante casi setenta años, la utilidad sustituyó a la felicidad en el campo económico. Se muestra además cómo desde el pensamiento de Bentham se originan la teoría del utilitarismo y las dimensiones cardinal y ordinal de la utilidad. Los métodos tradicionales, científicos y empíricos para estudiar y medir la felicidad, así como la confiabilidad y validez de estas mediciones, hacen parte también de este abordaje.&lt;/p&gt;

The crown joules: Resource peaks and monetary hegemony

Global energy and monetary systems appear to be deeply linked. Whereas mainstream economics focuses on the exchange aspects of the energy trade over the more structural aspects, the biophysical view of ecological economics and the historical economic thought exemplified by William Jevons help explain why monetary hegemony has correlated with large energy surpluses in the past. When such surpluses begin to decline, dramatic changes in monetary and financial systems often ensue—as was the case in the twentieth‐century United Kingdom and United States and, I argue, as is the case in twenty‐first‐century China. Considering energy and finance as linked systems allows us to more clearly understand the contemporary global economic and climate impasse—and to include China's monetary role in the new century as part of a larger solution.

Average and Marginal Labour Values Are: On Log (N)-A Reply to Hagendorf

1. introductionThis article addresses a debate in Political Economy that has its origins in the 1870s with, on the one hand, the publication of Stanley Jevons' Theory of Political Economy in 1871 and, on the other, Karl Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme in 1875. It is well known that in his article Marx advocated a communist system of economy in which workers were to be paid in labour tokens and could use these to acquire goods containing the same quantity of labour. Jevons became famous for his role in founding the marginalist school of economics, which, in the West, became the main alternative to the tradition of Classical Political Economy represented by Marx.What has not, until recently, been noticed was that there are actually linkages between the ideas in these two publications, linkages that surfaced in debates in the USSR in the 1960s.The issues addressed here are the feasibility of Marx's idea of an economic calculus based on labour time and on whether such a calculus can best be done using Marx's own definition of labour value, or whether that developed by Jevons should be used instead. We will review Klaus Hagendorf's (2014) advocacy of Jevons style of interpretation of labour value published in this issue, and then go on to present an empirical investigation into the feasibility of calculating labour values. This empirical investigation publishes for the first time an important property: the network structure of an industrial economy. This property means that proposals like those of the Soviet economist Novozhilov to use labour values directly as a tool of economic calculation may be more feasible than has hitherto been thought.Klaus Hagendorf has done political economy a service by pointing out the degree to which Jevons, the founder of marginalism, can still be described as a follower of the labour theory of value. Klaus Hagendorf points out that for Jevons the prices of commodities should be proportional to their relative marginal labour contents and argues that this marginalist interpretation of the labour theory of value is the most scientific one to adopt.1.1. Is Klaus Hagendorf's Claim Justified?Readers will be aware that the conventional interpretation of the labour theory of value emphasises Marx's definition of the value of a commodity being the average amount of labour that society has to devote to its production.The average amount of labour required to make something is not necessarily the same as the marginal amount of labour. The average labour required can in principle be above or below the marginal labour, so the issue of whether to use marginal or average labour content as the definition of value is not theoretically vacuous.Klaus Hagendorf goes on to argue that the Soviet economist Novozhilov was right to redefine the labour theory of value in terms of marginal labour content because this is the appropriate definition for socialist planning. Marginalist economics, Klaus Hagendorf argues, while it is not an appropriate theory for capitalist economy, it is the right theory to use for resource allocation in a socialist economy. In a capitalist economy, he says, monopolistic restrictions mean that marginalist theory is not appropriate, but it does potentially allow a way of computing the optimal allocation of resources in a socialist economy.This thesis of Hagendorf obviously has quite a long and respectable pedigree. Lange (1938), one of the most forceful Western theoretical advocates of socialism in the 1930s, argued from basically the same position as did Dickinson (1933). As economists trained in the marginalist tradition, they used this paradigm to structure their arguments for socialism. But they did not mix this with the labour theory of value. By the time Novozhilov was expressing his ideas in the 1950s, Lange was working for the socialist government in Poland and went on to hold high government office there. If it seems to us now to have been a genuine innovation for Novozhilov to combine marginal arguments with the labour theory of value in a planning context, it is perhaps worth recalling that this is not so far from what Lange was working on in the 1950s and 1960s (Lange 1969) so these sorts of approaches seem to have been part of the spirit of the age among Com-econ economists of the period. …

A Revised Bibliography of Publications by W. Stanley Jevons

This bibliography of publications by W. Stanley Jevons makes a number of significant changes to the extensive bibliography published by Inoue and White in 2002. Fourteen new entries are identified, which include reviews, an obituary of Charles Babbage, a series of articles regarding Jevons’s Coal Question and the record of a previously unknown appearance by Jevons as a witness before a House of Commons Select Committee. Information has also been added, or corrections made, to seventeen existing entries. It is argued that two entries that were previously attributed to Jevons should be deleted from his bibliography.

Commemorating William Playfair’s 250th birthday

and to Scott (1925, p. 348), Playfair was born on September 22, 1759, near the cityof Dundee in Scotland, and he died on February 11, 1823, in London. For readersnot familiar with William Playfair and his work, we would suggest to first refer toAppendix 1 and then continue with the main editorial.Towardstheendofthe19thcentury,Playfairandhisworkweremostlyforgotten.Inthediscussionof apaper ontabular analysis byWilliamA. Guy(aneditor, physician,and statistician), the English economist and statistician W. Stanley Jevons said (seeJevons’ comment on p. 657 of Guy 1879) that “

The Myth of the Oil Crisis

Guest editorial "Our supplies of...oil and natural gas are being rapidly depleted, and many of the great fields are already exhausted." Not a warning from last year, when oil prices set a record of USD 147/bbl, but the words of pioneering conservationist Gifford Pinchot in 1910. Fears of "peak oil" are nothing new. The economist William Jevons forecast in 1865 that falling coal resources threatened the British Empire. Predictions of imminent decline came from petroleum geologists in 1885, 1919, and 1956; from US President Jimmy Carter in 1977; and from the US government in 1980. A prominent "peak oiler," Colin Campbell, claimed in 1989 that oil output had peaked; another, Kenneth Deffeyes, put the peak date, rather precisely, at 16 December 2005. The high prices of 2008 seemed to give credibility to the idea that we had reached the physical limits of production. But now that prices have fallen, peak oil advocates raise a new alarm—that decline will be hastened by a lack of investment. The opening years of the 21st century have been marked by milestones in the world of oil: the war in Iraq, the Shell reserves downgrade, hurricane Katrina, and the breaking of the once unthinkable USD 100/bbl barrier. Many have seized on these events as evidence that we are crossing the threshold of peak oil. Behind us, a century-and-a-half of abundant, cheap oil that fuelled industrial civilization and brought unprecedented prosperity to a fortunate global minority. Ahead of us, permanent declines in oil production, scarce and unaffordable energy, wars over dwindling resources, disastrous climate change, perhaps the collapse of modern society. But these ideas are based on misconceptions, flawed reasoning, and excessive pessimism. The world has abundant oil and gas for decades to come, geopolitical conflicts can be avoided by adroit policies, and we can learn to use hydrocarbons without unacceptable environmental damage. Cheap Oil and Underinvestment Recent high prices certainly seem to give some credibility to the idea that we are approaching some fundamental limit of oil resources. But we should remember how we arrived at this situation, because the culprit is not constraints on oil in the ground: it is the long 1986–98 period of cheap oil and underinvestment. Low prices decimated the oil industry, while the rise of energy-hungry new powers in Asia, combined with robust demand in the developed world and geopolitical upsets in major producers, stealthily ate up spare production capacity. As oil prices rose, investment increased, but much was consumed by cost inflation, while the most promising areas were mostly off-limits for political reasons. Supply growth was therefore disappointing. The inevitable result, perhaps amplified by speculation and market nervousness, was a sharp rise in the oil price.

Retailing Poisoned Milk? New Evidence on Keynes and Jevons's Hostility to John Stuart Mill

In his 1936 memoir of W. Stanley Jevons, J. M. Keynes argued that Jevons's pronounced hostility to the dominance of J. S. Mill's political economy was due, in large part, to the imposition of Mill's work on Jevons's teaching at Owens College (subsequently the University of) Manchester. Keynes reported that a recently discovered set of student lecture notes confirmed his argument. He was subsequently accused of poor scholarship in that regard, because the contents of the one known set of student notes did not tally with his description. It is shown here, however, that Keynes was referring to a different set of notes that have only recently been located. Keynes was misled, nevertheless, in assuming that the notes he examined could establish his case. Moreover, although Jevons's statements could be confusing, the available evidence indicates that his complaints about the constraints on his teaching were principally concerned with logic and philosophy, rather than with political economy.

The role of the power/efficiency misconception in the rebound effect's size debate: Does efficiency actually lead to a power enhancement?

This paper addresses the question of whether the rebound effect's size is bigger or smaller than one. After a brief review of the related economic literature, a thermodynamic perspective tackles this topic by demonstrating that the dispute over the size of the rebound effect relies on a misconception of the thermodynamic nature of energy efficiency. The dichotomy, in fact, concerns the relationship between efficiency and power output rather than the scale of the economic side effects generated by energy efficiency mutations. Early intuitions of the dichotomy efficiency/power belong to the pioneering works of Stanley Jevons, in the field of economics, and Alfred Lotka in that of biology. Their findings are here approached using the basis of finite-time thermodynamics with a simple amendment, the addition of the time variable to the Carnot machinery. The model shows how a process of power maximization always leads to a sub-optimal efficiency level and additionally, that any efficiency improvement, in the context of low energy costs, will shift the power output of the machine instead of reducing energy consumption. A case study taken from the transport system is presented to elucidate this argument.

Cultivated Circles of The Empire: Bibliographical Notes on W.S. Jevons’s Antipodean Interlude (1854 -1859)

Describes the various components of W.S. Jevons’s work in Australia between 1854 and 1859 and the context in which it was produced. Explains how a complete list of Jevons’s Antipodean publications has been compiled from his sometimes confusing records. Discusses his social survey of Sydney, demonstrating that his manuscript was censored when published in 1929 by the Sydney Morning Herald. An appendix lists all Jevons’s Australian publications.I am becoming quite accustomed to the pen as a weapon of offence and defence….I often write a newspaper article and am then on thorns for ever so long after for fear of a libel action.William Stanley Jevons, October 1858