Abstract
Fashionable at the moment in federal policy-making circles is the notion of conservation. The President of the United States has called for the pricing of petroleum and related products at their cost of replacement. [5] The plan eschews the use of market forces but relies heavily on a variety of taxing and regulatory measures. [5] Nonetheless, the general idea is in accord with economists’ conclusion that marginal cost pricing will ensure that resources flow to their most highly valued uses. However, when governmental agencies “own” natural resources of the renewable variety, many departures from marginal cost pricing can be observed. The existence of these departures raises two sets of interrelated questions.
Federal Energy Administration. (The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Energy Administration.)
National Energy Strategies Project, Resources for the Future, Inc.
The authors would like to thank William Morgan and Gerald Sirkin for helpful comments.
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© 1981 Martinus Nijhoff Publishing
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Shapiro, D.L., Shelton, R.B., Sirkin, G. (1981). Public Ownership and Natural Resource Utilization. In: Horn, R.J. (eds) Studies in the Management of Government Enterprise. Social Dimensions of Economics, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8138-6_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8138-6_5
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