Resources, scarcities and rents: technological interdependence and the dynamics of socio-economic structures

The relationship between scarcities and producibility calls attention to the relationship between resources and socio-economic structures, as alternative configurations of interests in society may lead to different patterns of re source utilization and different dynamic trajectories. In this way, the structural analysis of resources leads to the political economy of resources and structural change. Both the structural and the macroeconomic approaches to scarcities and rents highlight the role of economic and technological history in making visible constraints and opportunities arising from the changing relationship between natural or technological scarcities and the producibility of resources and goods. Different historical contexts also had an important influence in drifting the economists’ attention from scarcity to producibility, or the other way round, and in shaping the economic theory of resources accordingly. The dynamic relationship between scarcity and producibility provides a useful heuristic for assessing the economists’ changing concentration of attention for the allocation of given resources or for the overcoming of re source bottlenecks through the transformation of production structures