Economic Resources

8 Key excerpts on "Economic Resources"

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  Environmental Resources

  • A.S. Mather, K. Chapman(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 1 , is a matter of continuing debate. Environmental resources can be regarded as useful or valued parts of the environment, but value can have different meanings. In the words of Berry (1990:203), it ‘suffers from the arrogance of economists, obfuscation by philosopers, and rhetoric in politics’. He goes on to identify at least four different meanings: cost in the market-place; usefulness for individuals or society; intrinsic worth; and symbol or concept (e.g. national flag or liberty). To find a meaningful common yardstick, such as the pound, dollar or other monetary unit, is problematic to say the least.

  Economics can be defined as the ‘study of the allocation of scarce resources for the satisfaction of human wants, and the problems of choice that this involves’ (Norton, 1984:2). (As such, it is a technical discipline concerned with means rather than ends. Rightly or wrongly, however, it is often associated with the ends such as the maximization of profit or of monetary value.) ‘Resources’ to the economist traditionally were land (i.e. natural resources), labour and capital. This reminds us of the many meanings that ‘resources’ can have, as well as sometimes giving rise to confusion in discussing the economics of natural resources. ‘Scarce’ simply implies that supply is not unlimited, and the significance of ‘human wants’ and ‘choice’ in the definition is self-evident.

  Economic systems

  An economic system is the means used to decide how to produce and allocate or distribute goods and services. There are four main economic systems: traditional, market or commercial, command or centrally planned, and mixed. To some extent they correlate with the systems of ownership and control discussed later in this chapter.

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  Technology Entrepreneurship

  Creating, Capturing, and Protecting Value

  • Thomas N. Duening, Robert A. Hisrich, Michael A. Lechter(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  Economic theory is divided into two branches: microeconomics and macroeconomics. Microeconomics is the study of individual choice and how choice is influenced by economic forces. It considers economics from the viewpoint of individuals and firms. Microeconomics involves the study of household decision making on what to buy, business-pricing decisions, and how markets allocate resources among alternatives. Macroeconomics is the study of inflation, unemployment, business cycles, and growth, focusing on the aggregate relationships in a society. Micro and macro analysis of an economy are related, and both need to be used to better understand how a country functions economically. Three issues are key to understanding economics: (1) resources, (2) goods and services, and (3) allocation of both resources and products. 2.1. Economic Resources A nation's resources consist of four broad areas: natural, capital, labor, and knowledge. Natural resources are provided by nature in limited amounts; they include crude oil, natural gas, minerals, timber, and water. Natural resources must be processed to become a product or to be used to produce other goods or services. For example, trees must be processed into lumber before they can be used to build homes, shopping malls, and schools. Capital resources are goods produced to make other types of goods and services. Some capital resources, called “current assets,” have a short life and are used up in the production process. These resources include fuel, raw materials, and paper. Long-lived capital resources, which can be used repeatedly in the production process, are called “fixed capital.” Examples include factory buildings, personal computers, and railroad cars. Labor resources represent the human talent of a nation. To have value in the labor force, individuals must be trained to perform either skilled or semiskilled work

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  Planning, Law and Economics

  The Rules We Make for Using Land

  • Barrie Needham(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  THE ECONOMIC LANGUAGE: MAKING A GOOD USE OF SCARCE RESOURCES

  ‘Buying land—what good d’you suppose I can do buying land, building houses?—I couldn’t get four per cent for my money!’ ‘What does that matter! You’d get fresh air.’ ‘Fresh air! What should I do with fresh air?’

  Engaged for fifty-four years…in arranging mortgages, preserving investments at a dead level of high and safe interest, conducting negotiations on the principle of securing the utmost possible out of other people compatible with the safety of his clients and himself, in calculations as to the exact pecuniary possibilities of all the relations of life, he had come at last to think purely in terms of money. Money was now his light, his medium for seeing, that without which he was really unable to see, really not cognizant of phenomena.

  (John Galsworthy, The Man of Property, 1906, ch. 3)

  Markets are highly articulated institutional arrangements to channel individual initiatives and avarice into putatively benign—but, if lucky, useful—directions. (Bromley 1991:20)

  A GOOD USE OF SCARCE RESOURCES

  Economics is the study of how people use scarce resources in order to produce things which they want. These are goods, like cars and houses and food and clothes; and services, like mobility and music and a day in the country. Many of these things have to be produced, and for this resources are necessary, such as labour and expertise and raw materials and machines. Other things which we want are there already and do not have to be produced, such as land and a fine view, but they might still be scarce and irreplaceable. The land use in a particular location has been produced using scarce resources, and it provides goods and services which we want. Economics can study how that land use was produced, which goods and services it provides, and who enjoys those.

  It is that things are scarce that gives rise to the study of economics, for then choices have to be made. Scarcity is a relative concept: it means that there is less of something than we want. There is (at the moment) no scarcity of air to breathe, in some countries there is no scarcity of water to drink, in other countries no scarcity of building land. But often there is a scarcity of good housing, of playing fields, of road space, of attractive views. If the things which we want have to be produced and we want more of them, then the limit to those things is set by the resources available for producing them. Are we going to use labour and machines to produce more houses or to produce more roads? Are we going to use land in a particular location to produce more playing fields or more housing? And if the things we want are there already (like attractive views) but are threatened, do we preserve them if that would mean not having something else which we want: do we preserve the countryside which pleases us, or do we build offices and factories on it?

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  The Economics of Property and Planning

  Future Value

  • Graham Squires(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  With regard to for ‘whom’ these goods and services are realised and by which method, different social groupings may benefit or lose depending on particular social cleavages such as wealth and class (lower, middle, upper, under), race, religion, gender, age, and sexuality. Particular minorities and majorities will benefit from the choices made in society – including private decisions by for instance commercial property interests and public interests such as politicians seeking the best combination of public returns for their constituents. Different goods (e.g. the production of merit goods such as education) and how they are produced (e.g. public, private, or a combination) will affect who ultimately receives the good or service. As an example, not all schoolchildren will be able to afford private education and would not be able to receive education.

  So more broadly, economics is the study of how society decides what, how, and for whom to produce. It is the decisions made by society that are of importance in determining the three questions of what, how, and for whom to produce – and these decisions can often be influenced by the level of ‘wants’ and ‘resources’ available.

  Resources, wants, and scarcity

  At either end of the spectrum in which wants and resources are situated is the idea of ‘Infinite Wants’ on one end, and ‘Scarce Resources’ on the other. Infinite wants hold the notion that people are hard-wired to always want to consume more goods, services, and experiences. Scarce resources in the form of factors of production (Land, Labour, Capital, and Entrepreneurship) restrict the ability for all of these infinite wants to be satisfied completely – as scarcity defines the resources as having limited availability. Due to this mismatch of infinite wants and scarce resources, it is thought in economic terms that a choice will need to be made.

  Using a property and planning example, a situation can be described where residents will want to live in a property that allows an improved quality of life – such as whether that is a better location, better school catchment, areas with low crime, commutable to suitable employment, and near to recreation space. However, these wants are curtailed due to the scarcity of resources, for instance, there is only finite (or even unique) land available for desirable locations, there are a limited number of available schools, not all locations are crime (or fear of crime) free, the commute time to work will have a limit, and there is only a finite amount of land available for recreation. As a result, this housing example demonstrates that the wants will not be completely satisfied given the scarce resources (and factors of production), and a compromise and choice will have to be made. This idea of choice can be aggregated to a national scale and demonstrate that not all of a nation’s inhabitants will be satisfied.

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  The Discretionary Economy

  A Normative Theory of Political Economy

  • Marc Tool(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Knowledge is truly the mother of all other resources. To be sure, not even omniscience can create matter or energy out of nothing. Nor can any science, no matter how skillful and advanced, ever restore to human use the energy once locked up in coal, oil, or gas, but spent. The difference between neolithic man, who roamed the earth in misery and fear, and man today, who lives in relative comfort and security, is knowledge— knowledge of petroleum and natural gas, of sulfur and helium, of chemistry and physics, the countless wonders of modern science—and the marvelous apparatus of cultural improvements [institutional arrangements] which knowledge has devised and built for its own application. Freedom and wisdom, the fruits of knowledge, are the fountainhead of resources.

  Seen in this light, the concept of resources is purely functional, inseparable from human wants and human capabilities.6

  If the term technology is given a somewhat more inclusive meaning than its familiar reference to machinery and equipment, it is convenient and helpful to regard the material resource base for any economy as being defined by technology.

  All the material resources . . . whether natural or man made, are the fruits of technology. Technology, in fact, can be thought of as the primary resource; without it all other resources would be economically nonexistent.

  This is clearly true of industrial and commercial facilities and of improved agricultural land. But it is also true of coal and oil, of iron ore, and of all the raw materials we obtain from the earth, the forests and the oceans. These are potential resources; they become actual resources only as technology makes it possible to extract them and convert them into useful products.7

  Or again,

  . . . natural resources do not explain the economic level of any society. On the contrary, what the natural resources of any society are conceived to be is determined by the technology of that society.8

  The view here is not that all things are possible. It is, rather, that advancements in the arts and sciences applied as technology of industry and agriculture constantly expand human discretion regarding the availability of productive inputs; in this sense, the advancements define the range of possible production. Typically, we do not run out of resources. A resource is generally defined out

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  Natural Resource Information for Economic Development

  • Raymond F. Mikesell(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • RFF Press

    (Publisher)

  I: The Role of Natural Resources in Economic Development In order to clarify the purpose of gathering information about natural resources, it is necessary to be clear about their economic significance. Failure to follow the dictates of common sense in thinking about the economic significance of natural resources may result in considerable mismanagement. The purpose here is not to put forward a theory of economic development or even to indicate adherence to one of the many current versions. Instead, the much more limited goal is to point out some aspects of the exploitation of natural resources that are important and with which any useful view of the process of economic growth ought to be consistent. Natural Resources as a Capital Stock To start with, no particular type of natural resource is essential to a high level of national income or to economic progress. We can assert with confidence that a country’s endowment of natural resources need not exercise a determining influence on the course of its national income over time—if it is able to trade. “All” that is necessary for economic progress is the availability of a substantial quantity of services of capital and labor—with a considerable part of the capital embodied in persons—plus a social system with certain characteristics favorable to systematic improvement of production practices. And the more capital per person the better. The truth of this observation is evident from the economic success of countries with limited natural resources and the success of countries with greatly different natural endowments. To enjoy economic success, a country must have access to natural resources, but this can be had through trade with other nations with a different or better natural endowment

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  Evolving Regional Economies

  Resources, Specialization, Globalization

  • Martin Henning(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Agenda Publishing

    (Publisher)

  5 Resources in firms and in regions

  [R]‌egions grow for similar reasons that firms do: regions host resources, which yield capabilities that expand with their use, that are valuable, rare, specific to economic activities, and hard to access from outside the region.

  F. Neffke, M. Hartog, R. Boschma & M. Henning, “Agents of structural change”, 27

  What resources are

  In our evolutionary perspective, resources are something very fundamental. They form the basis on which regional economic change and growth are built. “Resources” also refers to a variety of different things. In this chapter, we explore some of these differences and what they mean for regional economic change.

  Working with the idea of resources raises a couple of issues. It is, for instance, hard to find real examples in the business strategy literature of what resources actually are. In Chapter 4 , we suggested the following definition: resources can be anything that provides the means on which organizations draw in order to achieve a capability. When trying to put this definition of resources to real use, the following problems become apparent:

  • Aggregation: at what level of aggregation should a resource be defined? For example, is human capital in general a resource, or is a resource more precisely the specializations that the individuals of the labour force possess?

  • Level: at what level should a resource be defined? Is a university a resource, or are the skilled engineers and the scientific knowledge it produces the resource?

  The answer here is pragmatic: it depends on what aggregation and which level the resource is used in order to achieve a capability. If a specialized skill is required to develop a particular capability, that skill is the resource. If skilled engineers in general are required, they are the resource. If the university produces knowledge that is directly put into productive use, the knowledge becomes the resource.

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  Overexploitation or Sustainable Management? Action Patterns of the Tropical Timber Industry

  The Case of Para (Brazil) 1960-1997

  • Imme Scholz(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  From the viewpoint of ecological economics the subdivision of the discipline into environmental and natural-resource economics along the lines of static and dynamic considerations is unsuitable: the external effects that accrue when the environment is exploited also have a dynamic component in that any calculation of the costs and benefits of avoiding or eliminating them would have to take account of the assimilation capacity of natural ecosystems with an eye to stability aspects. For this reason Odum (1980) broadens the concept of natural resources to include all natural life-support systems. As a multifunctional storehouse of natural capital, the natural environment provides flows of multipurpose services that are essential for human life and hence at the same time for economic activities (welfare). The essential services are:

  • – Supply of the natural resources used as energy and material inputs in the economic process;
  • – assimilation and degradation of waste products from the economic process of production and consumption;
  • – provision of a flow of environmental services for individuals and production systems (here it is not a matter of directly physical exchange processes but of the maintenance of stable ecosystems and the general environmental quality needed for life).

  From an economic viewpoint a problem of relative scarcity arises when, in utilizing the environment, one of these three functions is over-stressed at the expense of the others. This is true above all of the third function, since the physical dependence of economic activities does not enter into market-mediated processes.

  „Resource-dependent economic growth will tend to bias natural-resource allocation towards meeting the physical needs of the expanding economic process –

  in terms of the provision of raw materials and the assimilation of waste. This would be to the detriment of the provision of environmental services, unless economic policy explicitly corrects this allocation process

  by taking into account the growing relative scarcity of these natural services. " (Barbier 1989, p. 97)

  Technological progress can alleviate this relative scarcity to the extent that it is possible to lower consumption by raising efficiency.

  A problem of absolute scarcity

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