Jevons' Paradoxes: William Stanley Jevons and the Roots of Biophysical and Neoclassical Economics - Paperbackby Kent Klitgaard (Author) In 1865, economist William Stanley Jevons published The Coal Question, describing the crucial role that coal played in British economic development. Here, he enunciated what has come to be known as the Jevons paradox, which stated that improvements in resource efficiency leads to greater resource use as the expansion of scale occasioned by lower operating costs overwhelms the savings due to greater efficiency. The