Elicitation of Expert Opinions for Uncertainty and Risks B.M. Ayyub, CRC Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8493-1087-3, US$ 79.95 hardcover, 302 pages

Abstract

A landmark publication by Harold J. Barnett and Chandler Morse in 1963 (Scarcity and Growth: The Economics of Resource Availability, Johns Hopkins University Press for Resources for the Future, Baltimore) renewed a longstanding debate on the prospect of sustained economic growth under natural resources availability constraints. Their main argument was that substitutability of resources and technological progress would sustain economic growth indefinitely even in the presence of exhaustible natural resources. A decade and a half later, a forum of experts mainly from economics, energy, and mineral resources (including Barnett and the now recent Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz) reviewed the issue (Scarcity and Growth Reconsidered, Johns Hopkins University Press for Resources for the Future, Baltimore, 1979). Not surprisingly, there was no consensus as to whether or not the scarcity of natural resources would curb or eventually halt economic growth.