ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors focus on the stock of a particular type of capital, such as the stock of oil reserves or the stock of a species of fish in a lake. Capital stocks can increase over time, with proper investment, or decrease if they are simply used up. The economic activity of resource management can be viewed as investment, leading to greater production possibilities in the future. Production and consumption levels in modern societies, particularly in industrialized countries, may be leading to the depletion of essential natural capital stocks. The stock of manufactured capital is the stock of physical things produced by human beings, which in turn are used to produce other goods. The raw quantity of human capital in an economy might be crudely measured in terms of the number of people in its population who are of normal working age.
