Smoke from Factory Chimneys
The Applied Economics of Air Pollution in the Progressive Era
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4298147 |
|---|---|
| Authors | H Spencer Banzhaf (Spencer Foundation), Randall Walsh (University of Pittsburgh) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-33 |
| Publication date | 2025-09-30 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History of Political Economy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-2702 • E-ISSN: 1527-1919 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00182702-12213441 |
| OpenAlex | W4414658293 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 33 |
Like today, one hundred years ago air pollution was a matter of grave concern in the world's most polluted cities. In the wake of its famous 1908-9 social survey, the City of Pittsburgh commissioned an "Economic Survey of Pittsburgh" from J. T. Holdsworth, a prominent institutional economist at the University of Pittsburgh. Although wide ranging, the report opened by stating that "the first fundamental need in Pittsburgh is the eradication of smoke." This report was followed by a series of Smoke Investigations, in which, astonishingly, jars were placed around the city and the ash weighed monthly. John J. O'Connor, a staff economist, estimated the economic costs from this smoke, arguably the first damage-cost study. We show how O'Connor's work, situated in social survey, urban planning, and conservation movements, is a product of the Progressive Era, but how at the same time it appears as a conspicuous example of how environmental economics could eventually evolve out of this intellectual context
Air pollution · Factory (object-oriented programming) · Product (mathematics) · Progressive era · Situated · Smoke · American Environmental and Regional History · Architecture, Design, and Social History · Energy Efficiency and Management
The Theory of Environmental Policy
Evidence on the impact of sustained exposure to air pollution on life expectancy from China’s Huai River policy
Conservation And The Gospel Of Efficiency
A History of Ecological Economic Thought
Is There an Energy Efficiency Gap
Class, Gender, and Coal Smoke
The Political Economy of Social Change and Nation-Building During the Progressive Era
Municipal Housekeeping and the Origins of the Economics of the Urban Environment (1900s–1920s)
The Pittsburgh Survey of 1907–1908
Defining Economics
Changing Fuel Use Behavior and Energy Transitions
Make a Righteous Number
Retrospectives
The State and Economic Knowledge
Exceptional and Unimportant
Clearing the Ground
Retrospectives
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |