Talk:Jevons paradox

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Jevons paradox has been listed as one of the Social sciences and society good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

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Date	Process	Result
August 14, 2010	Peer review	Reviewed
August 31, 2010	Good article nominee	Listed
September 15, 2015	Peer review	Reviewed

Current status: Good article

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should it be "Jevons' paradox"

Moore's Law, Wright's Law... they are all possessive. The possessive apostrophe seems to be left out in this case simply because this name ends with an S. Am I being too pedantic? It is commonly written w/o the apostrophe. Is there a reason (other than laziness) that to not have the apostrophe? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.53.185.55 (talk) 19:58, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Jevons Paradox or Jevons Effect?

The introduction claims both phrases are in circulation. Related concepts seems to largely be referred to as "effects": e.g. "rebound effect", "reservoir effect". "Paradox" assumes that the concept violates readers' intuition, whereas "effect" seems less assuming and at least as technically accurate. I edited the contents to largely prefer this less assuming terminology, but my attempt to rename the page accordingly was rejected. I can imagine some arguments for preserving "Paradox" in the title (discoverability, historical preservation), but they weren't articulated in the revert message and I'm not sure how to weigh them. So, seeking more input regarding the article's title here. Wallacoloo (talk) 03:23, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Jevons Paradox is what the article has been titled since 2004 when it was created. I think a discussion would be appropriate before a move. Thriley (talk) 04:20, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I started a discussion here as well: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Economics. Thriley (talk) 04:21, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The issue with using "Jevons effect" (or, as is currently the case, "Jevons' effect") as the primary term for the phenomenon throughout the article is that that term doesn't really appear to be in use. A Google Ngrams search for "rebound effect," "Jevons paradox," and "Jevons effect" reveals a (comparative) lot of use of the first, some (almost entirely recent) use of the second, and almost no use of the third. Oooooooseven (talk) 23:01, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It is in fact, more of a paradox than an effect. According to [wiki.riteme.site, effect:](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/effect)

1. The result or outcome of a cause.

And [paradox](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/paradox):

1. An apparently self-contradictory statement, which can only be true if it is false, and vice versa.

Not all causes have paradoxical effects. While common, efficiencies do not always lead to increased consumption. The paradox identified by Jevons, resulted from historical data on coal consumption before and after the Watt steam engine came on the scene. Given that we can never know what the consumption curve would have looked like in the absence of improved efficiency, we can not simply declare that the change in adoption of coal fired steam engines was an effect of the efficiency change.

The rapid increase in consumption seemed paradoxical, given the sudden increase in efficiency, but it might have been much worse without those efficiencies, so we certainly have a paradox, but it is not certain the observations were caused by said efficiencies, though they were probably a contributing factor. JwD (talk) 05:32, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Bit late to the discussion, but I believe, per policy WP:COMMONNAME, that we should be using the term "Jevons paradox" throughout the article, as this is the term that is commonly used in the wider world. As such, unless there are objections, I will be reverting the edit from last year that changed almost all instances of the term "Jevons paradox" to "Jevons effect". LK (talk) 06:32, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Nonsense phrasing in 3rd paragraph of History section

"...the contemporary economics have traversed, to expand the scope of what is meant by rebound effects and to provide Jevons' effect a more concise definition."

What does "the contemporary economics have traversed" mean?

Based on what follows, I think it should be something like "contemporary economists have expanded the scope...", but I am not a subject expert. The original appears to be a franken sentence, but I am not sure exactly where the seems are. JwD (talk) 05:07, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is a horrible sentence that doesn't make sense. I will try to fix it.--FeralOink (talk) 13:05, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]