Scarcity

Examples of Scarcity in the following topics:

• Scarcity Leads to Tradeoffs and Choice

  • A fundamental concept in economics is that of scarcity.
  • In contrast to its colloquial usage, scarcity in economics connotes not that something is nearly impossible to find, but simply that it is not unlimited.
  • The concept of trade-offs due to scarcity is formalized by the concept of opportunity cost.

• Barriers to Managing Control

  • Barriers to organizational control can include scarcity of resources, inaccurate measurements of the process, improper information flow, and incorrect analyses.
  • This under-funding of the control system creates resource scarcity for the process.

• Human Population Growth

  • The exponential growth of the human population could lead to food shortages, global warming, and other issues of resource scarcity.
  • Researchers predict that similar cases of resource scarcity will grow more common as the world population increases.

• River Valley Civilizations

  • Access to water is still crucial to modern civilizations; water scarcity affects more than 2.8 billion people globally.
  • Water scarcity may be physical, meaning there are inadequate water resources available in a region, or economic, meaning governments are not managing available resources properly.
  • The United Nations Development Programme has found that water scarcity generally results from the latter issue.

• Reasons for and Consequences of Shifts in the Aggregate Demand Curve

  • However, as the system evolves and aligns itself closer to the highest potential output (optimal utilization of resources or Y*), scarcity will naturally cause the prices to increase more than the overall output in a system.
  • This is somewhat intuitive economically when scarcity and utilization are taken into account.

• Internal and External

  • The first external constraint, resource scarcity, refers to the limited availability of essential inputs (including skilled labor), key raw materials, energy, specialized machinery and equipment, warehouse space, and other resources.

• The Psychology of Persuasion

  • Scarcity: Perceived scarcity will generate demand.

• Microeconomics

  • The two key elements of this economic science are the interaction between supply and demand and scarcity of goods .

• Changes in Demand and Supply and Impacts on Equilibrium

  • This is an intuitive theory underlining the fact that scarcity is relevant to the willingness to pay.
  • As discussed above, scarcity plays a critical role in pricing and thus controlling supply is often even considered a strategic play by companies in specific industries (most notably industries like precious stones, rare earth metals, etc.).

• Chesapeake Slavery

  • However, by the 1680s, fluctuating tobacco prices and the growing scarcity of land in the region made the Chesapeake less appealing to men and women willing to indenture themselves.
  • The scarcity of indentured servants meant that the price of their labor contracts increased, and Chesapeake farmers began to look for alternative, cheaper sources of bonded labor.