The economics of natural resources: Understanding and predicting the evolution of supply and demand

We develop a dynamic model of prices and quantities of non-renewable resources, carefully justifying our assumptions. Resource stocks are inhomogeneous, and there is endogenous directed technological change both in extraction and final-good production. The model explains stylized facts while simultaneously providing a framework for prediction; it yields analytical results in the baseline case, and may be developed to make empirical predictions about real resources. In the baseline case the economy passes through a series of phases: initially resource consumption is low; as technology improves, resource consumption rises and real resource price is constant; in the long run there is a transition to a b.g.p. on which resource consumption is constant and resource price tracks the wage.