The Historical Role of Firewood

Today, the cost of energy — things like electricity, or gas, or heating oil — is considered an essential piece of economic data. But it turns out that for much of America's history, we've been overlooking a crucial economic figure: the cost of firewood. For decades, firewood was the dominant energy source powering the US economy. And yet there aren't really any official statistics about firewood prices. After all, how would you even go about putting a price tag on something that's growing in a lot of people's backyards? On this episode, we speak with Nicholas Muller, a Carnegie Mellon University economist and author of the new paper, "Firewood in the American Economy: 1700 to 2010," which attempts to fill in this crucial gap in our economic data. We talk about how Nicholas went about finding 300-year-old firewood prices, and what the new data series can tell us about the development of the US economy and the relationship between growth and energy.

Only Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox — now delivered every weekday — plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.