Hotelling's rule
Harold Hotelling published a paper The Economics of Exhaustible Resources in the Journal of Political Economy in 1931, this analysis lead to what became known as Hotelling's rule.
Hotelling was an American mathematical statistician and an economic theorist who is also associated with other phrases including Hotelling's law, Hotelling's lemma and Hotelling's T-square distribution in statistics. Hotelling's rule, although established in the 1930s became well know in the 1970s after the oil crisis and high oil prices because it looked at how the economics of finite resources, such as oil from an economic perspective. It is also relevant today in relation to the construction of buildings because there is increasing awareness of the environmental impacts of material use in buildings and the differentiation between renewable and non-renewable resources.
Standard capitalist economics, usually looks at how prices are established on normal goods or services, in the neoclassical sense or a demand and competition context, the aims being to achieve maximum profits for producers with minimimal costs. In this scenario the economic rules generally show that price equals marginal cost in perfect competition. Hotelling introduced into this equation the possibility resources are not infinately available, and many are indeed finite with limited availabilty, such as coal, oil, natural gas (something people became increasingly aware of from the 1970s).
The rule shows that, in the profit-maximization scenario, if a resource is finite, the producer will not just charge a marginal cost, he will need to also charge a premium which he called the scarcity rent. This scarcity rent premium allows for the fact that once consumed, that one unit of finite resource, is no longer available in the future. So once this is factored into the equation the logical economics would be to sell the product or resource a price that increases at the rate of interest.
Or in other words 'the net price path is a function of time, while maximizing economic rent during the time of fully extracting a non-renewable natural resource. The maximum rent, the scarcity or Hotelling rent is the maximum rent that could be obtained while emptying the stock resource. In efficient exploitation of a non-renewable and non-augmentable resource, the percentage change in net-price per unit of time should equal the discount rate in order to maximise the present value of the resource capital over the extraction period.'
[edit] Related articles on Designing Buildings
- A social, circular economy.
- Circular economy models.
- Circular economy - transforming the worlds number one consumer of raw materials.
- Composting.
- Composites.
- Construction materials
- Construction waste.
- Cradle to cradle product registry system.
- Deconstruction.
- Design for deconstruction.
- Economic sustainability.
- End of life potential.
- Green supply chain management.
- Life cycle.
- Planned obsolescence
- Products as a Service PaaS.
- Quantification of construction materials in existing buildings (material intensity).
- Recyclable construction materials.
- Recycling.
- Reduce, reuse, recycle.
- Renewable energy.
- Reused construction products.
- Sustainable materials.
- Sustainability.
- Types of biobased materials.
- Types of materials.
- Use of ceramics in construction.
- Waste management plan.
- Waste management plan for England.
Featured articles and news
Stress Awareness Week and legal duties for employers
Calling employers to follow the five Rs this week.
Key points and relevance to construction of meeting, due to reconvene.
Cladding remediation programmes, transparency and target date.
National Audit Office issue report on cladding remediation.
HBPT and BEAMS Jubilees. Book review.
Does the first Labour budget deliver for the built environment?
What does the UK Budget mean for electrical contractors?
Mixed response as business pays, are there silver linings?
A brownfield housing boost for Liverpool
A 56 million investment from Homes England now approved.
Fostering a future-ready workforce through collaboration
Collaborative Futures: Competence, Capability and Capacity, published and available for download.
Considerate Constructors Scheme acquires Building A Safer Future
Acquisition defines a new era for safety in construction.
AT Awards evening 2024; the winners and finalists
Recognising professionals with outstanding achievements.
Reactions to the Autumn Budget announcement
And key elements of the quoted budget to rebuild Britain.
Chancellor of the Exchequer delivers Budget
Repairing, fixing, rebuilding, protecting and strengthening.
Connecting conservation research and practice with IHBC
State of the art heritage research & practice and guidance.
Innovative Silica Safety Toolkit
Receives funding boost in memory of construction visionary.
Gentle density and the current context of planning changes
How should designers deliver it now as it appears in NPPF.
Sustainable Futures. Redefining Retrofit for Net Zero Living
More speakers confirmed for BSRIA Briefing 2024.