NATURAL-RESOURCE SCARCITY - STATISTICAL-ANALYSIS

Evaluates the trends in the relative prices of natural resource commodity aggregates. Using statistical methods that permit the analysis of the stability (in terms of the constancy of the coefficients for trend model) and the direction of movement in these series over time. The techniques include the Brown-Durbin cusum test and Quandt's log-likelihood ratio. While both have attracted considerable attention in recent literature application of these techniques to specific problems has, to date, been somewhat limited. Section II outlines the model and data, and briefly reviews the test procedures. The third section discusses the results and compares them to the earlier evidence. Section IV reviews the implications of the analysis. -Author