ABSTRACT

The concept of scarcity is a fundamental problem of all economic activities and economics as a discipline. As exhaustible resources, Rare Earths are absolute scarce per definition because their availability is fixed and finite at any point in time. However, many studies point out that Rare Earths are not rare or scarce due to their relatively high geological availability of elements in the earth’s crust. Therefore, Chapter 3 assesses the scarcity of Rare Earths through the application of different economic and non-economic concepts of scarcity: geochemical scarcity, thermodynamic scarcity, static ranges of resources and reserves, unit costs, user costs and market prices, temporal and structural imbalances of demand and supply and criticality assessment. In summary, all of these indicators have some shortcomings that diminish their significance as single used indicator to measure Rare Earths scarcity. However, the hypothesis that Rare Earths are not rare or scarce cannot be validated because most indicators show at least a moderate level of scarcity.