Natural resource scarcity: Empirical evidence and public policy

This study updates and expands the empirical analysis of natural resource scarcity published in 1963 by Harold Barnett and Chandler Morse (“Scarcity and Growth: The Economics of Natural Resource Availability,” Johns Hopkins Press). Unit extraction costs are measured for all extractive products, four major subgroups (agriculture, minerals, forestry, and fishing), and selected individual commodities. The efficacy of the unit cost measure of resource scarcity is addressed and a critique of alternative scarcity indicators is provided. Unit cost appears to be the most practical scarcity index because there are adequate checks against its theoretical shortcomings and data are readily available which contain fewer deficiencies than other indexes. On the basis of the Barnett and Morse definition of relative scarcity, the empirical evidence does not support the need for public actions justified solely on the basis of increasing resource scarcity.