IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/amerec/v58y2013i1p16-26.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Simon-Ehrlich Bet: Teaching Relative Vs. Absolute Scarcity

Author

Listed:
  • John E. Wagner
  • David H. Newman

Abstract

Absolute resource scarcity is all too real for many students, especially those from noneconomic disciplines. They have a Malthusian economic worldview. We describe a pedagogical model using “The Bet†between Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon as its focus. The model includes a “Bet†– the students taking the Ehrlich position; a directed discussion providing students with an approach to determine who wins the Bet; and a written assignment, oral presentations, and reflection. The learning outcomes are: 1) students examine their Malthusian beliefs through developing hypotheses, analyzing and testing them, and writing and presenting their conclusions orally; 2) that market's incorporate changes in substitutes, technology, recycling, and discovery; 3) that market prices rise and fall in the short term but it is the long term that illustrates how markets respond to changes in information; and 4) students reflect critically on their initial absolute scarcity assertion.

Suggested Citation

  • John E. Wagner & David H. Newman, 2013. "The Simon-Ehrlich Bet: Teaching Relative Vs. Absolute Scarcity," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 58(1), pages 16-26, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:amerec:v:58:y:2013:i:1:p:16-26
    DOI: 10.1177/056943451305800103
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/056943451305800103
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/056943451305800103?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. Ricardo, David, 1821. "On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, edition 3, number ricardo1821.
    2. Harold Hotelling, 1931. "The Economics of Exhaustible Resources," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 39(2), pages 137-137.
    3. Toman, Michael & Simpson, R. David & Ayres, Robert, 2004. "Scarcity and Growth in the New Millennium: Summary," RFF Working Paper Series dp-04-01, Resources for the Future.
    4. Hall, Darwin C. & Hall, Jane V., 1984. "Concepts and measures of natural resource scarcity with a summary of recent trends," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 363-379, December.
    5. Krautkraemer, Jeffrey, 2005. "Economics of Natural Resource Scarcity: The State of the Debate," RFF Working Paper Series dp-05-14, Resources for the Future.
    6. Adel Daoud, 2010. "Robbins and Malthus on Scarcity, Abundance, and Sufficiency," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 69(4), pages 1206-1229, October.
    7. Baumgartner, Stefan & Becker, Christian & Faber, Malte & Manstetten, Reiner, 2006. "Relative and absolute scarcity of nature. Assessing the roles of economics and ecology for biodiversity conservation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(4), pages 487-498, October.
    8. Wayne Joerding, 2010. "Teaching and Learning with Individually Unique Exercises," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(2), pages 125-135, March.
    9. Goeller, H E & Weinberg, Alvin M, 1978. "The Age of Substitutability," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 68(6), pages 1-11, December.
    10. Krautkraemer, Jeffrey A., 2005. "Economics of Natural Resource Scarcity: The State of the Debate," Discussion Papers 10562, Resources for the Future.
    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. Michal Mizerák, 2019. "Comparison of Transitional Theories to Post-Scarcity in Science-Fiction Literature," European Journal of Business Science and Technology, Mendel University in Brno, Faculty of Business and Economics, vol. 5(1), pages 107-123.

    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. André, Francisco J. & Smulders, Sjak, 2014. "Fueling growth when oil peaks: Directed technological change and the limits to efficiency," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 18-39.
    2. Campbell, Elliott T. & Tilley, David R., 2014. "Valuing ecosystem services from Maryland forests using environmental accounting," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 7(C), pages 141-151.
    3. Marius Bulearca & Catalin Popescu, 2020. "New Approaches To The Management Of Natural Resources (2): The Market," Annals - Economy Series, Constantin Brancusi University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 1, pages 48-54, February.
    4. Alfred Greiner & Willi Semmler & Tobias Mette, 2012. "An Economic Model of Oil Exploration and Extraction," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 40(4), pages 387-399, December.
    5. Marius Bulearca & Catalin Popescu, 2019. "New Approaches To The Management Of Natural Resources (1): The Exploitation," Annals - Economy Series, Constantin Brancusi University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 6, pages 34-40, December.
    6. Durmaz, Tunç, 2018. "The economics of CCS: Why have CCS technologies not had an international breakthrough?," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 328-340.
    7. RALPH C. d'ARGE & RICHARD B. NORGAARD & MANCUR OLSON & RICHARD SOMERVILLE, 1991. "Economic Growth, Sustainability, And The Environment," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 9(1), pages 1-23, January.
    8. Celine de Quatrebarbes & Bertrand Laporte, 2015. "What do we know about the mineral resource rent sharing in Africa?," CERDI Working papers halshs-01146279, HAL.
    9. Barbiroli, Giancarlo & Focacci, Antonio, 1999. "An appropriate mechanism of fuels pricing for sustainable development," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 27(11), pages 625-636, October.
    10. Jonas B{aa}{aa}th & Adel Daoud, 2020. "Extending Social Resource Exchange to Events of Abundance and Sufficiency," Papers 2010.02658, arXiv.org.
    11. Reynolds, Douglas B., 1999. "The mineral economy: how prices and costs can falsely signal decreasing scarcity," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 155-166, October.
    12. N D Uri & R Boyd, 1995. "Scarcity and Growth Revisited," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 27(11), pages 1815-1832, November.
    13. Amjad Ali & Marc Audi & Yannick Roussel, 2021. "Natural Resources Depletion, Renewable Energy Consumption and Environmental Degradation: A Comparative Analysis of Developed and Developing World," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 11(3), pages 251-260.
    14. Cleveland, Cutler J. & Ruth, Matthias, 1997. "When, where, and by how much do biophysical limits constrain the economic process?: A survey of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's contribution to ecological economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 203-223, September.
    15. Chakravorty, Ujjayant & Magné, Bertrand & Moreaux, Michel, 2008. "A dynamic model of food and clean energy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 1181-1203, April.
    16. 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.
    17. Fatma El-Hamidi, 2007. "Early Retirement in the Government Sector in Egypt: Preferences, Determinants and Policy Implications," Working Papers 721, Economic Research Forum, revised 01 Jan 2007.
    18. Bryan, Brett A. & Ye, Yanqiong & Zhang, Jia'en & Connor, Jeffery D., 2018. "Land-use change impacts on ecosystem services value: Incorporating the scarcity effects of supply and demand dynamics," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 32(PA), pages 144-157.
    19. Hu, Xiaowei & Li, Peng, 2022. "Relief and stimulus in a cross-sector multi-product scarce resource supply chain network," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    20. Jeffrey A. Krautkraemer, 1998. "Nonrenewable Resource Scarcity," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(4), pages 2065-2107, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Absolute Scarcity; Relative Scarcity;

    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:sae:amerec:v:58:y:2013:i:1:p:16-26. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/aex .

    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.