Volume 3, No. 1 (Spring 2000)
The Hotelling Principle defines socially-optimal conservation of an exhaustible resource i a mathematically-defined, equilibrium environment in which no human action can occur. Nevertheless, the economics profession generally tends to view the Hotelling Principle as offering the promise of being operational and to have potentially sufficient empirical content to serve as the basis of prescriptive policies for the socially-optimal conservation of an exhaustible resource. We have examined the Hotelling Principle from the Misesian perspective of praxeology and the axioms of human action.
