Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cda/wpaper/251.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Coal and the Industrial Revolution, 1700-1869

Author

Listed:
  • Gregory Clark
  • David Jacks

    (Department of Economics, University of California Davis)

Abstract
How important was coal to the Industrial Revolution? Despite the hugegrowth of output, and the grip of coal and steam on the popular image ofthe Industrial Revolution, recent cliometric accounts have assumed coalmining mattered little to the Industrial Revolution. In contrast both E. A.Wrigley and Kenneth Pomeranz have made coal central to the story. Thispaper constructs new series on coal rents, the price of coal at pithead and atmarket, and the price of firewood, and uses them to examine this issue. Weconclude coal output expanded in the Industrial Revolution mainly as aresult of increased demand rather than technological innovations in mining.But that expansion could have occurred at any time before 1760. Furtherour coal rents series suggests that English possession of coal reserves madea negligible contribution to Industrial Revolution incomes.

Suggested Citation

  • Gregory Clark & David Jacks, 2006. "Coal and the Industrial Revolution, 1700-1869," Working Papers 251, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:cda:wpaper:251
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.dss.ucdavis.edu/files/HPPYnKNLa3NGv13NksArk89G/06-16.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    economics; revolution; coal; industrial;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N53 - Economic History - - Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment and Extractive Industries - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • N73 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
    • Q32 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Exhaustible Resources and Economic Development
    • Q43 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Energy and the Macroeconomy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cda:wpaper:251. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Letters and Science IT Services Unit (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/educdus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.