A Neoclassical Analysis of the Economics of Natural Resources

Abstract

The oscillations in the general views on the prospects for the future, alternating between the despair of imminent and inevitable doom and the euphoria of an impending new millenium, have a remarkable regularity about them, perhaps matching that of the long business cycle. The nineteenth century concern about the implications of the second law of thermodynamics, as represented, for instance, in the work of Henry Adams, has its twentieth century counterpart in Georgescu-Roegen, and Malthus's worry about food scarcity has its twentieth century counterpart in Meadows and Forrester. There are those who would suggest that the nineteenth century preachers of inevitable progress have been replaced by the modern neoclassical economist who, if he does not believe that we are on the verge of the new millennium, finds it difficult to take seriously the prognostications of imminent doom.