Nicola: Ferrara is relevant but I would stick to American literature  
(Progressives did absorb ideas from abroad but only to a certain  
degree and when the did they often "Americanized" them). You will find  
many many interesting sources, some antedating the  Smyth v. Ames  
decision, in the volume on "Bibliography on Valuation of Public  
Utilities" published by the American Society of Civil Engineers in  
1913. Se the link:

http://books.google.it/books?id=ctoZAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA2160&dq=%22cost+of+reproduction%22+railway&hl=it&sa=X&ei=3IdiU7XFMIGN4wSFwIDYAg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22cost%20of%20reproduction%22%20railway&f=false

(just search for cost of reporduction)
Columbia has a paper copy and I can get it for you this summer.

The interesting aspect is that, in addition to some useful interesting  
economic sources (H.C. Adams in primis and of course Carey) you will  
find many official commission reports, business reports, and technical  
articles (mostly by engineers) dealing with the issue of reproduction  
cost. People like Bonbright, Commons and Hale enter the scene later.  
As to John P. Davis I could find no mention of him even in Dorfman's  
encyclopedic The Economic Mind.
ciao
luca



Nicola Giocoli <[log in to unmask]> ha scritto:

> Poor Ferrara maybe deserves some apologies of mine. A JSTOR search revealed
> that the earliest (post-1865) use of the term "cost of reproduction" or
> "reproduction cost" in indexed English-speaking journals was in a paper by
> prominent Italian economist Achille Loria, titled "Economics in Italy" and
> published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
> Science, Vol. 2 (Sep., 1891), pp. 59-80. In that paper Loria explained to
> late 19c American readers the theory of reproduction cost as developed in
> Italy by. Francesco Ferrara!
>
>
>
> Pace Ferrara, that would be just a curiosity, were it not for the
> circumstance that the next JSTOR hit is a paper published five years later
> in the very same journal and titled "The Union Pacific Railway". In that
> paper the reproduction cost was expressly used in a railroad evaluation
> context, like the decisions I mentioned in my previous message. See Annals
> of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 8 (Sep.,
> 1896), pp. 47-91. The author, a certain John P. Davis, wrote: "how is the
> value of the [railway] properties to be determined, by capitalizing the
> income or by estimating the 'cost of reproduction'?" (p.68). That was the
> problem the Supreme Court dealt with, and solved, in Smyth v. Ames two years
> later.
>
>
>
> While I'm still skeptical about the economists' role in the legal part of
> the story (my gut feeling is that courts got the notion from
> business/finance techniques), I wonder whether anyone in the List knows
> something about this John P. Davis. The mentioned paper contains no
> information; other JSTOR works of him just indicate that he came from
> Brooklyn, NY; from his book Corporations, available in the McMaster Archive,
> I learned that he had a PhD and died very young in 1903. Any other
> information, especially about his education?
>
>
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Nicola