Population Growth and Natural Resource Scarcity: long-run development under seemingly unfavourable conditions

Lucas Bretschger

No 37, OxCarre Working Papers from Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies, University of Oxford

Abstract: The paper considers an economy which is constrained by natural resource use and driven by knowledge accumulation. Resources are essential inputs in all the sectors. It is shown that population growth and poor input substitution are not detrimental but, on the contrary, even necessary for obtaining a sustainable consumption level. We find a new type of Hartwick rule defining the condi-tions for a constant innovation rate. The rule does not apply to capital but to labour growth, the crucial input in research. Furthermore, it relates to the sec-toral structure of the economy and to demographic transition. The results con-tinue to hold with a backstop technology and are extended for the case of minimum resource constraints.

Keywords: Population growth; non-renewable resources; poor input substitu-tion; technical change; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O41 Q32 Q55 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-02-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-res
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Population Growth and Natural-Resource Scarcity: Long-Run Development under Seemingly Unfavorable Conditions (2013)
Working Paper: Population growth and natural resource scarcity: long-run development under seemingly unfavourable conditions (2008)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oxf:oxcrwp:037

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