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Hi folks, 
 
This is my first posting to this list having only recently subscribed.  
My name is Barkley Rosser and I am a Professor of Economics at James 
Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. 
 
Anyway, I wanted to pose a question to you all that was discussed with 
little resolution on another list: Where did the concept of "externality" 
come from? 
 
I would note that Pigou is usually associated with it but he never used 
this term to the best of my knowledge, preferring to talk about "social 
costs" instead. This was still the dominant terminology in 1960 when 
Ronald Coase wrote his famous article from which others deduced "the Coase 
Theorem." However, by a decade after that the term "externality" had 
become well entrenched in the public finance textbooks just in time for 
the new discipline of environmental economics to pick it up as that 
discipline emerged out of "public finance," so to speak, public choice 
still being a sideshow then and the modern "public economics" that 
presumably includes both of those (and more) having not yet emerged. 
 
Thanks in advance for any insights or information anybody on the list 
might have with regard to this question. 
 
Barkley Rosser 
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