IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/revaec/v20y2007i1p63-90.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Resourceship: An Austrian theory of mineral resources

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Bradley

Abstract

Economists inside and outside of the Austrian-school tradition have formulated a subjectivist theory of mineral resources. While von Mises ( 1940 ) presented a rudimentary theory, institutionalist Zimmermann (1933 and after) provided an in-depth mind-centered approach distinct from the objective, neoclassical theory for minerals developed by Jevons ( 1865 , 1866 ), Gray ( 1913 ), and Hotelling ( 1931 ). A full-fledged Austrian theory identifies the fixity/depletionism view of minerals as incompatible with entrepreneurship. Mineral resourceship, praxeologically akin to manufacturing, or the making of capital goods, demotes the distinction between depletable and nondepletable resources for the sciences of human action. Instead of nonreproducibility, the interplay of geography and institutions becomes the locus of mineral-resource theory, given the nonuniform distribution of deposits. An Austrian-institutional theory is more robust for explaining changes in mineral-resource scarcity than neoclassical depletionism, and offers a wide research agenda for current debates over resource production, usage, and future availability. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Bradley, 2007. "Resourceship: An Austrian theory of mineral resources," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 20(1), pages 63-90, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:revaec:v:20:y:2007:i:1:p:63-90
    DOI: 10.1007/s11138-006-0008-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11138-006-0008-7
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11138-006-0008-7?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. G. C. Watkins, 1992. "The Hotelling Principle: Autobahn or Cul de Sac?," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1), pages 1-24.
    2. L. C. Gray, 1913. "The Economic Possibilities of Conservation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 27(3), pages 497-519.
    3. Thomas R. De Gregori, 1987. "Resources Are Not; They Become: An Institutional Theory," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(3), pages 1241-1263, September.
    4. Harold Hotelling, 1931. "The Economics of Exhaustible Resources," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 39(2), pages 137-137.
    5. Adelman, M. A., 1991. "User cost in oil production," Resources and Energy, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 217-240, September.
    6. Jeffrey A. Krautkraemer, 1998. "Nonrenewable Resource Scarcity," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(4), pages 2065-2107, December.
    7. Morris A. Adelman, 1993. "Modelling World Oil Supply," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1), pages 1-32.
    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. Gordon, Richard L. & Tilton, John E., 2008. "Mineral economics: Overview of a discipline," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 4-11, March.
    2. Radetzki, Marian, 2010. "Peak Oil and other threatening peaks--Chimeras without substance," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(11), pages 6566-6569, November.
    3. Seyhan, Demet & Weikard, Hans-Peter & van Ierland, Ekko, 2012. "An economic model of long-term phosphorus extraction and recycling," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 103-108.
    4. William Hongsong Wang & Vicente Moreno-Casas & Jesús Huerta de Soto, 2021. "A Free-Market Environmentalist Transition toward Renewable Energy: The Cases of Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-27, July.
    5. Paulina Kupisz, 2016. "The costs of resource-led development. An analysis of the economic impact of the oil extraction boom in Colombia," International Economics, University of Lodz, Faculty of Economics and Sociology, issue 13, pages 79-94, March.
    6. Corvellec, Hervé & Paulsson, Alexander, 2023. "Resource shifting: Resourcification and de-resourcification for degrowth," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    7. Ugo Bardi & Rolf Jakobi & Hiroshan Hettiarachchi, 2016. "Mineral Resource Depletion: A Coming Age of Stockpiling?," Biophysical Economics and Resource Quality, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 1-9, August.
    8. Hultman, Johan & Corvellec, Hervé & Jerneck, Anne & Arvidsson, Susanne & Ekroos, Johan & Gustafsson, Clara & Lundh Nilsson, Fay & Wahlberg, Niklas, 2021. "A resourcification manifesto: Understanding the social process of resources becoming resources," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(9).
    9. Eduardo Fernández Luiña & Santiago Fernández Ordóñez & William Hongsong Wang, 2022. "The Community Commitment to Sustainability: Forest Protection in Guatemala," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(12), pages 1-20, June.

    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. Watkins, G.C., 2006. "Oil scarcity: What have the past three decades revealed?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 508-514, March.
    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. Barbiroli, Giancarlo & Focacci, Antonio, 1999. "An appropriate mechanism of fuels pricing for sustainable development," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 27(11), pages 625-636, October.
    4. Smith, James L., 2012. "On the portents of peak oil (and other indicators of resource scarcity)," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 68-78.
    5. Robert K. Kaufmann, 2014. "The End of Cheap Oil: Economic, Social, and Political Change in the US and Former Soviet Union," Energies, MDPI, vol. 7(10), pages 1-17, September.
    6. Greene, David L & Jones, Donald W & Leiby, Paul N, 1998. "The outlook for US oil dependence," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 55-69, January.
    7. Johnson Kakeu, 2023. "Concerns for Long-Run Risks and Natural Resource Policy," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 84(4), pages 1051-1093, April.
    8. Kaufmann, Robert K. & Shiers, Laura D., 2008. "Alternatives to conventional crude oil: When, how quickly, and market driven?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 405-411, October.
    9. Alexandre Stamford da Silva & Fernando Campello de Souza, 2008. "The economics of water resources for the generation of electricity and other uses," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 41-61, November.
    10. Ghandi, Abbas & Lin, C.-Y. Cynthia, 2012. "Do Iran’s buy-back service contracts lead to optimal production? The case of Soroosh and Nowrooz," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 181-190.
    11. Johannes Mauritzen, 2017. "The Effect of Oil Prices on Field Production: Evidence from the Norwegian Continental Shelf," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 79(1), pages 124-144, February.
    12. Seyhan, Demet & Weikard, Hans-Peter & van Ierland, Ekko, 2012. "An economic model of long-term phosphorus extraction and recycling," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 103-108.
    13. Paltseva, Elena & Toews , Gerhard & Troya-Martinez, Marta, 2022. "I’ll pay you later: Sustaining Relationships under the Threat of Expropriation," SITE Working Paper Series 59, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics.
    14. Mardones, Cristian & del Rio, Ricardo, 2019. "Correction of Chilean GDP for natural capital depreciation and environmental degradation caused by copper mining," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 143-152.
    15. Alcott, Blake, 2008. "The sufficiency strategy: Would rich-world frugality lower environmental impact," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(4), pages 770-786, February.
    16. Liski, Matti & Montero, Juan-Pablo, 2014. "Forward trading in exhaustible-resource oligopoly," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 122-146.
    17. Anne Épaulard & Jean-Pierre Laffargue & Pierre Malgrange, 2008. "Présentation générale," Economie & Prévision, La Documentation Française, vol. 0(2), pages 1-13.
    18. Agnani, Betty & Gutierrez, Maria-Jose & Iza, Amaia, 2005. "Growth in overlapping generation economies with non-renewable resources," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 387-407, September.
    19. Hart, Rob & Spiro, Daniel, 2011. "The elephant in Hotelling's room," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(12), pages 7834-7838.
    20. Zaklan, Aleksandar & Abrell, Jan & Neumann, Anne, 2016. "Stationarity changes in long-run energy commodity prices," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 96-103.

    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:kap:revaec:v:20:y:2007:i:1:p:63-90. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.