This brief retrospective note describes the author’s occasional contributions to the economics of natural resources. It emphasizes the role and interpretation of the Hotelling condition and discusses the reasons why that result plays so small a role empirically. The concept of sustainability...

For various reasons ? empirical, technical and casual ? modern (neo-classical) growth theory has centered its attention on steady-state exponential growth. When the models are intented to serve as a guide to policy, the tacit presumption is that the goal of growth policy is to increase the...