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This study uses the methods of experimental economics to investigate possible reasons for the lack of empirical support for the Hotelling rule for nonrenewable resources. We argue that as long as resource stocks are large enough, producers may choose to (partially) ignore the dynamic component of their production decision, shifting production to the present and focusing more on strategic behavior. We experimentally vary stock size in a nonrenewable resource duopoly setting and find that producers with large stocks indeed pay significantly less attention to variables related to dynamic optimization, and overproduce relative to the Hotelling rule. (author's abstract)

Der Beitrag untersucht die Frage, wie ein ressourcenabbauendes Unternehmen, das über einen gegebenen Bestand an Ressourcen verfügt, seine Abbau- und Angebotsmengen in der Zeit steuert. Das Unternehmen vergleicht den Gewinn heute mit dem Gewinn, der ihm in Zukunft dadurch entgeht, daß die Ressource heute abgebaut wird. Im einfachsten Fall mit Abbaukosten von Null muß der Ressourcenpreis in der Zeit mit der Diskontrate steigen. Es wird diskutiert, wie sich diese sog. Hotelling-Regel ändert, wenn andere Bedingungen (positive Abbaukosten) unterstellt werden. Ferner wird erörtert, wie sich der Preis in einem Marktgleichgewicht unter Beachtung der Hotelling- Regel bestimmt. Schließlich werden einige wirtschaftspolitische Anwendungen diskutiert.

This paper shows how competition among governments for mobile firms can bring about excessive differentiation in levels of taxation and public good provision. Hotelling's Principle of Minimum Differentiation is applied in the context of tax competition and shown to be invalid. Instead, when an equilibrium exists, differentiation of public good provision is maximized. Non-existence of equilibrium, which is possible, is a metaphor for intense tax competition. The paper also shows that, to some extent, perfect tax discrimination presents a solution to the existence problem created by Hotelling tax competition, but that the efficiency problem of Hotelling tax competition is exacerbated.

For a country fractionalized in competing factions, each owning part of the stock of natural exhaustible resources, or with insecure property rights, we analyze how resources are transformed into productive capital to sustain consumption. We allow property rights to improve as the country transforms natural resources into capital. The ensuing power struggle about the control of resources is solved as a non-cooperative differential game. Prices of resources and depletion increase faster than suggested by the Hotelling rule, especially with many competing factions and less secure property rights. As a result, the country substitutes away from resources to capital too rapidly and invests more than predicted by the Hartwick rule. The power struggle boosts output but depresses aggregate consumption and welfare, especially in highly fractionalized countries with less secure property rights. The theory suggests that adjusted net saving estimates calculated by the World Bank using market prices over-estimate welfare-based measures of genuine saving.