ABSTRACT
Given his very long run perspective, this special issue offers an opportunity to examine the Nordhaus (1973) framework, and comment on how energy markets have allocated resources in the very long run. Therefore, the focus in this paper is to look at backstop energy resources, extraction costs and royalties, as well as transport costs, taxes and interest rates, over more than 500 years in Britain. The focus is on coal markets from the thirteenth century until the mid-twentieth century, because they provide a case study in which governments had limited influence over prices, and markets dominated the allocation of energy resources. This data analysis provides a crude test of his model.
