Pricing and Depletion of an Exhaustible Resource when There is Anticipation of Trade Disruption

Abstract

This paper considers pricing and depletion of an exhaustible nonrenewable resource in an economy wherein domestic consumption is provided for by supplementing extraction from the economy's own resource stock with imports, the future supply of which is not assured. The socially optimal response to threat of trade disruption is a more conservationist depletion program for the domestic resource stock than would be called for, if import supplies were assured to persist. Competitive domestic firms adopt the socially optimal conservationist program. However, firms anticipating domestic market power after the disruption of import supplies are revealed to overextract the domestic resource stock.