ABSTRACT
Are natural resources, collectively or individually, growing more scarce in an economic sense? The answer to this question requires an index or indicator that will register scarcity accurately, when it occurs. There are several candidates for such an indicator and disagreement about which is best. We have concentrated on the three most common measures: unit cost, omitting the cost of natural resources, as developed by Barnettt and Morse in their widely referenced work; extractive natural resource product price; and natural resource rental rate. We conclude that each of these measures has flaws.
