An Amateur Among Professionals

Robert Solow

Annual Review of Resource Economics, 2009, vol. 1, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: This brief retrospective note describes the author’s occasional contributions to the economics of natural resources. It emphasizes the role and interpretation of the Hotelling condition and discusses the reasons why that result plays so small a role empirically. The concept of sustainability is introduced in the simplest possible content, that of directly consuming a finite stock over infinite time. When the resources flow is an input into production along with capital that can be accumulated, the nature of sustainability changes and becomes more interesting. It is suggested, however, that to consider instead the eventual availability of a resource-free backstop technology may be just as interesting and more relevant. That concept is illustrated in the direct-consumption context but awaits further development in production economies.

Keywords: resource economics; Hotelling condition; sustainability; backstop technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B31 Q30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.resource.050708.144305 (application/pdf)
Full text downloads are only available to subscribers. Visit the abstract page for more information.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:anr:reseco:v:1:y:2009:p:1-14

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.annualreviews.org/action/ecommerce

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Annual Review of Resource Economics from Annual Reviews Annual Reviews 4139 El Camino Way Palo Alto, CA 94306, USA.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by http://www.annualreviews.org ().