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A 40th Anniversary Redux of the Simon and Ehrlich Bet



Author(s)

Jia Liu, Tom Fitzpatrick

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DOI:10.17265/2328-2185/2021.04.007

Husson University, Bangor, USA

This is the authors third redux of the now famous Simon and Ehrlich wager on the value of a basket of metals based upon scarcity and demand; this paper falls on the 40th anniversary of the controversial bet. The first two papers faithfully replicated the original bet explored the underlying arguments of Malthus and scarcity and the more Cornucopian view based on human ingenuity and inventiveness. In this paper we faithfully replicate the original bet and update it from 1980 to 2019 and then we add consumption weight as an additional variable which goes directly to demand of the metals. Simon offered in his book The Ultimate Resource and optimistic view of how human ingenuity has always risen to solving the resource issues that mankind faces and yes, even creates. Ehrlich’s pessimistic view presented in The Population Time Bomb has not come to fruition; developing economies have adopted free market capitalism and democracy and a global middle class is growing like it never has before.

Liu, J., & Fitzpatrick, T. (2021). A 40th Anniversary Redux of the Simon and Ehrlich Bet. Management Studies, Vol. 9, No. 4, 334-339.