This Working Paper joint two previous articles by the authors: The economic theory of exhaustible natural resources, in “Enciclopedia degli Idrocarburi”, vol. IV, Istituto della Enciclopedia Treccani, Roma, 2008, pp. 3-10;Technological innovation, relative scarcity, investments, in...

Rent, resources, and technologies are three crucial issues to the understanding of history and economics. The scarcity of resources, its interplay with technology, and the role of rent in explaining both economic growth and income distribution are investigated by adopting a multi-sectoral and...

The essay investigates non producible (natural) resources and rent from three points of views: stylized facts, quantitative economics and economic theory. Taking the first point of view, the author discusses how economic growth can be represented in terms of never-ending tension between scarcity...