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Date: | Fri Mar 31 17:18:30 2006 |
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================= HES POSTING =================
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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