186 The Political Economy of Resource Use 



Conclusions 



This paper has been concerned with four important problems in 

 the political economy of natural resource use. There are, no doubt, 

 others that deserve consideration. But enough has been said, I think, 

 to justify the view that there are special conditions affecting the dis- 

 covery, production, and consumption of large groups of raw materials 

 meriting the attention of a particular branch of economic analysis. 

 These conditions, affecting the relationships among investment, out- 

 put, and price in the minerals field, the large variations in price and 

 income that characterize many raw materials industries, the prevalence 

 of external economies and diseconomies, and the relationships between 

 present and future costs and benefits, may or may not produce "fail- 

 ures of the price system" that justify public intervention. But if the 

 questions of "failure" and "justification" are to be considered at all 

 we inevitably move outside the realm of pure economics and into that 

 of political economy. 



