From Depreciation to Exhaustible Resources

Harold Hotelling’s 1931 article on the economics of exhaustible resources is considered groundbreaking in the history of nonrenewable resource analysis. Hotelling’s innovation has been characterized by comparing his work with other contributions dealing with conservation issues. It has also been connected to his earlier work on depreciation, published in 1925, for using the same kind of mathematical formalism. This article further explores this second research direction on the basis of new archival materials, showing that Hotelling conceived his contributions on resources and depreciation as closely and substantially intertwined. It also suggests that Hotelling’s interest in exhaustible resources came from his earlier readings in accounting. These results shed new light on Hotelling’s early economic research, on our common understanding of his 1931 contribution, and on the origins of the connection between nature and capital in the history of environmental economics.

Foundations of Contemporary Economics: Harold Hotelling on Location and Exhaustible Resources

Harold Hotelling is an influential statistician working in the field of economic theory at the beginning of the 20th century. His contributions to economics are trailblazing and open new topics for economic and business analysis. His best-known work is his solution to the problem of exhaustible resources. He also triggered the exploration of spatial economics and the analysis of product differentiation through his solution of the optimal location of producers in a duopoly. Less known, but important, are his contributions to the development of modern neoclassical microeconomic theory. Hotelling is also one of the scientists who initiated the turn towards mathematical economics in the 1950s. In this paper we provide an introduction of his groundbreaking work on economic theory.

Bio-charge Elastic Characterization for A Qualitative Perspective of Innovative Bio-Composite Materials

In order to save natural resources, recycling necessarily becomes a top priority for all of us, to save exhaustible resources, produce green energy and preserve the environment.In this perspective, we are trying to valorize a waste of animal origin, largely neglected by the actors of materials, through an industrial transformation into a biological charge to make new sustainable bio-composite materials.Using a tensile test bench, we try to mechanically characterize this biomaterial of renewable resources that, unlike eco-composites, has been neglected by the material actors.Obtained from waste, with a high recycling potential and from renewable resources, the bio-charge to be analyzed will be injected, later in different polymer materials in order to support the evolution of their physicochemical properties: resistance to elongation, wear, heat, corrosion, etc.Consequently, we will be able to contribute to an eco-design of sustainable materials with safeguarding exhaustible resources and preserving our environment