Introduction strongscarcitystrong and frontiers - Assets.pdfVIP

Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-70165-5 - Scarcity and Frontiers: How Economies Have Developed Through Natural Resource Exploitation Edward B. Barbier Excerpt More information 1 Introduction: scarcity and frontiers Resource development is a neglected topic in economic history. To be sure, no economist would be surprised to learn that resource abundance is a function of extraction and transportation cost as well as of physical availability, and the role of substitution in mitigating resource scarcity is widely appreciated … But natural resources still are viewed as the last of the exogenous factors, governed by the principle of diminishing returns in an economic growth process whose other constituents have come to be treated both as endogenous and subject to increasing returns. (David and Wright 1997, p. 204) Introduction For an early Spring day in Washington, DC in 1913, the weather was overcast but mild. The large crowd milling about the Capitol were jubilant and expectant. After all, their presidential candidate, Woodrow Wilson, had swept to victory the previous November, oust- ing the incumbent William Taft and soundly beating the third party candidate Theodore Roosevelt. To the average American, Woodrow Wilson embodied the spirit and success of his times. His life and career spanned the US Civil War of the 1860s, the hard post-war years of reconstruction and reconcili- ation, and, from 1870 onwards, the rapid expansion of the US econ- omy across the North American