IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/opecrv/v28y2004i1p27-62.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Beautiful and not So Beautiful Minds: An Introductory Essay on Economic Theory and the Supply of Oil

Author

Listed:
  • Ferdinand E. Banks

Abstract

Both the teaching and the studying of energy economics have been severely disadvantaged by the emphasis placed on the Hotelling theory of resource exhaustion. For example, in the study of oil and gas economics, this unrealistic construction is fundamentally irrelevant, because it does not consider fixed investment, nor the (real) options associated with such things as starting or interrupting production. In addition, both economics students and teachers have failed to recognize the crucial importance of the reserves‐to production ratio, as well as the research of M. King Hubbert. Among other things, this oversight has led to an irrational optimism, where expectations of the future availability of oil are concerned. To be more specific, the probability that the oil pessimists are correct is large enough to justify the attachment of a sizable discount factor to any claim of future oil abundance.

Suggested Citation

  • Ferdinand E. Banks, 2004. "Beautiful and not So Beautiful Minds: An Introductory Essay on Economic Theory and the Supply of Oil," OPEC Energy Review, Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, vol. 28(1), pages 27-62, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:opecrv:v:28:y:2004:i:1:p:27-62
    DOI: 10.1111/j.0277-0180.2004.00078.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0277-0180.2004.00078.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.0277-0180.2004.00078.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ferdinand E. Banks, 1987. "The Reserve-Production Ratio," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2), pages 147-151.
    2. Thompson, Andrew C., 2001. "The Hotelling Principle, backwardation of futures prices and the values of developed petroleum reserves -- the production constraint hypothesis," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 133-156, April.
    3. Thorvaldur Gylfason, 2002. "Mother Earth: Ally or Adversary?," World Economics, World Economics, 1 Ivory Square, Plantation Wharf, London, United Kingdom, SW11 3UE, vol. 3(1), pages 7-24, January.
    4. Banks, F. E., 1974. "A note on some theoretical issues of resource depletion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 238-243, October.
    5. Farzin, Y. H., 2001. "The impact of oil price on additions to US proven reserves," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 271-292, July.
    6. Alhajji, A. F. & Huettner, David, 2000. "OPEC and other commodity cartels: a comparison," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 28(15), pages 1151-1164, December.
    7. Ferdinand E Banks, 2001. "Global Finance and Financial Markets:A Modern Introduction," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number 4439, February.
    8. Robert A. Marshalla & Dale M. Nesbitt, 1986. "Future World Oil Prices and Production Levels: An Economic Analysis," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1), pages 1-22.
    9. Graham A. Davis, 1996. "Option Premiums in Mineral Asset Pricing: Are They Important?," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 72(2), pages 167-186.
    10. Banks, Ferdinand E., 1991. "`Paper' oil, `real' oil, and the price of oil," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 19(6), pages 517-525.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Izabel Rigo Portocarrero, 2012. "Brasil: la sostenibilidad de la agroindustria de la caña de azúcar y las oportunidades de exportación de bioetanol a la Unión Europea," Post-Print halshs-00875174, HAL.
    2. Courage Mlambo, 2022. "Non-Renewable Resources and Sustainable Resource Extraction: An Empirical Test of the Hotelling Rule’s Significance to Gold Extraction in South Africa," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(17), pages 1-17, August.
    3. Stela Cani, 2009. "Resource Abundance, Mineral Funds and Institutional Quality," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2009-04, Department of Economics, University of Reading.
    4. Ferdinand E. Banks, 2004. "Economic Theory and a Faith-Based Approach to Global Warming," Energy & Environment, , vol. 15(5), pages 837-852, September.
    5. Tobias Kronenberg, 2008. "Should We Worry About The Failure Of The Hotelling Rule?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(4), pages 774-793, September.
    6. Brown, Mark T. & Cohen, Matthew J. & Sweeney, Sharlynn, 2009. "Predicting national sustainability: The convergence of energetic, economic and environmental realities," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 220(23), pages 3424-3438.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Güntner, Jochen H.F., 2019. "How do oil producers respond to giant oil field discoveries?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 59-74.
    2. Ringlund, Guro Bornes & Rosendahl, Knut Einar & Skjerpen, Terje, 2008. "Does oilrig activity react to oil price changes An empirical investigation," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 371-396, March.
    3. Ferdinand E. Banks, 2003. "An introduction to the economics of natural gas," OPEC Energy Review, Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, vol. 27(1), pages 25-63, March.
    4. Cannizzaro, Anthony P. & Weiner, Robert J., 2015. "Multinational investment and voluntary disclosure: Project-level evidence from the petroleum industry," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 32-47.
    5. Leach, Andrew & Mason, Charles F. & Veld, Klaas van ‘t, 2011. "Co-optimization of enhanced oil recovery and carbon sequestration," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 893-912.
    6. Lips, Johannes, 2018. "Debt and the Oil Industry - Analysis on the Firm and Production Level," VfS Annual Conference 2018 (Freiburg, Breisgau): Digital Economy 181504, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    7. Davis, Graham A., 1996. "Real options: Managerial flexibility and strategy in resource allocation : Lenos Trigeorgis The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996, xiii + 427 pp. (hardcover), ISBN 0-262-20102-X," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 218-220, September.
    8. Wirl, Franz, 2009. "OPEC as a political and economical entity," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 399-408, December.
    9. Alves, Joana Duarte Ouro & Faria, Weslem Rodrigues, 2024. "Reserves, well drilling and production: Assessing the optimal trajectory of oil extraction for Brazil," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    10. Robert Cairns, 2001. "Capacity Choice and the Theory of the Mine," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 18(1), pages 129-148, January.
    11. Klaus Mohn & Petter Osmundsen, 2011. "Asymmetry and uncertainty in capital formation: an application to oil investment," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(28), pages 4387-4401.
    12. Chevillon, Guillaume & Rifflart, Christine, 2009. "Physical market determinants of the price of crude oil and the market premium," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 537-549, July.
    13. Gao, Shen & van ’t Veld, Klaas, 2021. "Pegging input prices to output prices—A special price adjustment clause in long-term CO2 sales contracts," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    14. Aune, Finn Roar & Mohn, Klaus & Osmundsen, Petter & Rosendahl, Knut Einar, 2010. "Financial market pressure, tacit collusion and oil price formation," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 389-398, March.
    15. Belu Mănescu, Cristiana & Nuño, Galo, 2015. "Quantitative effects of the shale oil revolution," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 855-866.
    16. Insley, M.C. & Wirjanto, T.S., 2010. "Contrasting two approaches in real options valuation: Contingent claims versus dynamic programming," Journal of Forest Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 157-176, April.
    17. Lei Zhu & ZhongXiang Zhang & Ying Fan, 2011. "An evaluation of overseas oil investment projects under uncertainty using a real options based simulation model," Economics Study Area Working Papers 121, East-West Center, Economics Study Area.
    18. Okullo, Samuel J. & Reynès, Frédéric & Hofkes, Marjan W., 2015. "Modeling peak oil and the geological constraints on oil production," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 36-56.
    19. Hallwood, Paul, 2007. "A note on US royalty relief, rent sharing and offshore oil production," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(10), pages 5077-5079, October.
    20. Liu, Xiaoran & Ronn, Ehud I., 2020. "Using the binomial model for the valuation of real options in computing optimal subsidies for Chinese renewable energy investments," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:opecrv:v:28:y:2004:i:1:p:27-62. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291753-0237 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.