The Notion of Effectual Supply and the Theory of Normal Prices with Exhaustible Natural Resources

This paper proposes a revised theory of the classical notion of normal prices for an economy with exhaustible natural resources. The author introduces the notion of effectual supply and argues that Sraffa’s equations, without the Hotelling rule equation, can be reformulated to deal with the existence of an exhaustible natural resource. Such a revision of a well-established theory requires a reinterpretation and methodological clarification of Sraffa’s equations, but without a change in their mathematical form. The revised theory must focus on the effectual supply of the resource and it can ignore its total endowment.