The economics of exhaustible resources

Are natural resources getting scarcer? How should the limited reservoir of non-replenishable raw materials such as metals and fossile fuels be utilized by successive generations? What possible solutions are proposed by economics in the face of diminishing reserves of raw materials? These are the questions which occupied German and foreign economists at the meeting of Gesellschaft für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften—Verein für Socialpolitik—in Mannheim on September 24–26, 1979. The following report on the crucial issues raised at the meeting is not claimed to cover the full range of the discussion.