ABSTRACT
According to popular opinion, scarcity is the creation of economists. In part, this has to do with Lionel Robbins' famous definition which is discussed by many of the contributors to this volume. 1 As discussed in this section his portrayal of economics solely as the science which studies the relationship between given ends and scarce means which have alternative uses was highly misleading for the 1930s when in the light of massive unemployment, so-called scarce resources could neither be used nor allocated across competing ends. The chapters in this section are written by both economists and non-economists and display divergent views about the nature of economics and the role of scarcity in economics.
