"Throughout much of history, a critical driving force behind global economic development has been the response of society to the scarcity of key natural resources. Increasing scarcity raises the cost of exploiting existing natural resources and creates incentives in all economie…
"The antecedent to the present work is Marian Radetzki's book A Guide to Primary Commodities in the World Economy, published by Blackwell in 1990, three decades ago. In that book Radetzki presented the gist of what he had learnt over the 30 preceding years of active study and re…
