| Abstract: | This paper is concerned with the effect of natural resource scarcity on economic growth in the United States. After defining the notion of scarcity and introducing two measures of scarcity—unit costs and relative resource price—changes in resource scarcity trends for lead, zinc, nickel, aluminium, silver, iron and copper over the most recent three decades are investigated. Only for silver and iron is there any indication that such a change has occurred. For silver, the change is transitory. To the extent that change takes place, it has implications for future economic growth, i.e. natural resource scarcity and economic growth are interrelated. To see whether this is a relevant concern, subsequent to the examination of changing resource scarcity trends an objective effort is made to identify a long-run equilibrium relationship between natural resource scarcity and economic growth. Relying on cointegration techniques, only for the unit cost measure for lead and copper for one of the measures of cointegration is there a suggestion that natural resource scarcity has affected economic growth in the United States over the period 1889–1992. |
