IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/amerec/v58y2013i1p16-26.html

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. 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.
    2. Harold Hotelling, 1931. "The Economics of Exhaustible Resources," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 39(2), pages 137-137.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. Krautkraemer, Jeffrey A., 2005. "Economics of Natural Resource Scarcity: The State of the Debate," Discussion Papers 10562, Resources for the Future.
    6. 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.
    7. 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.
    8. Krautkraemer, Jeffrey, 2005. "Economics of Natural Resource Scarcity: The State of the Debate," RFF Working Paper Series dp-05-14, Resources for the Future.
    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.
    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. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. Pedro Monteiro & Teresa De Noronha & Paulo Neto, 2013. "A Differentiation Framework for Maritime Clusters: Comparisons across Europe," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 5(9), pages 1-30, September.
    7. 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.
    8. LinBai Li & WeiLing Liu & Samia Khalid & Hamid Mahmood, 2026. "Investigating the Role of Natural Resource Depletion and Consumption Expenditures in Escalating Carbon Inequality," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(1), pages 335-349, January.
    9. 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.
    10. Combes, Jean-Louis & Delacote, Philippe & Combes Motel, Pascale & Yogo, Thierry Urbain, 2018. "Public spending, credit and natural capital: Does access to capital foster deforestation?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 306-316.
    11. Barbiroli, Giancarlo & Focacci, Antonio, 1999. "An appropriate mechanism of fuels pricing for sustainable development," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 27(11), pages 625-636, October.
    12. Jordan, Brett, 2018. "Economics literature on joint production of minerals: A survey," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 20-28.
    13. Jonas B{aa}{aa}th & Adel Daoud, 2020. "Extending Social Resource Exchange to Events of Abundance and Sufficiency," Papers 2010.02658, arXiv.org.
    14. Daniel Durán-Sandoval & Gemma Durán-Romero & Francesca Uleri, 2023. "Scarcity Concept in the contemporary mainstream economic science: an analysis of its ontological and epistemological ambiguity," The Journal of Philosophical Economics, Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, The Journal of Philosophical Economics, vol. 16(1), pages 69-99, Annual.
    15. 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.
    16. 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.
    17. Torres, Cati & Valero, Alicia & Valero, Antonio & Naredo, José Manuel, 2026. "Squaring the circle of the circular economy. The need to properly account for scarcity to guide mineral resource management," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 240(C).
    18. Addison, Tony & Ghoshray, Atanu, 2023. "Discerning trends in international metal prices in the presence of nonstationary volatility," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    19. Lapko, Yulia & Trucco, Paolo & Nuur, Cali, 2016. "The business perspective on materials criticality: Evidence from manufacturers," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 93-107.
    20. Döring, Ralf, 2006. "Ressourceninput und der Input ökologischer Leistungen in der Kapitaltheorie," Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Diskussionspapiere 06/2006, University of Greifswald, Faculty of Law and Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    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.