According to psychological research, scarcity increases an object's desirability. Although inconsistent with the assumptions of formal economic theory, this effect of scarcity may be attributable to people's naive (or informal) economic theories. More specifically, scarcity's enhancement of desirability may be mediated by the belief that scarce things are more expensive than available ones. Exi...

The link between water scarcity and public unrest is a close one. Groundwater is the only viable resource in most arid and semi-arid environments that can sustain rural and urban populations. Periodic drought forces people off the land who take refuge in the cities, taxing already stressed resources. Mining of groundwater places cities at risk; aquifers supplying both Yemen’s capital city Sana’...

Editorial Does scarcity lead to better integrated care? This is an attractive idea. The argument is that shortage of resources should motivate professionals to share these effectively, and this inevitably means integration. Examples include war leading to social cohesion in uniting against a common enemy. In World War II efficient use of scarce food resources through rationing led to improvemen...

Introduction Sedation is widely used in intensive care unit (ICU) patients to limit the risk of pulmonary barotrauma and to decrease oxygen needs. However, adverse effects of sedation have not been fully evaluated; in particular, effects of benzodiazepine and opiates on microcirculation have not been extensively studied. The aim of this study was to evaluate the microcirculatory effects of a se...

Many researchers have used game theory to study the problem of encouraging cooperation in peer-to-peer and mobile ad hoc networks, where resources are provided collectively by the users. Previous work has modelled the problem as either a multi-player social dilemma or a network of two-player prisoner’s dilemmas, but neither of these approaches captures a crucial aspect of the problem, namely sc...

We are constantly reminded that we live in an ‘information age’—an era in which production, consumption, and everyday life are all dominated by the pervasive presence and flow of information made possible by the digitisation of society. Amongst the hype, one might be forgiven for believing that information is something of a panacea, to be embraced by all. However, closer inspection suggests tha...

Traditional micro-economic theory assumes that consumer preferences are independent of market forces like supply, demand, and price. However, this assumption is inconsistent with psychological research on commodity theory (Brock 1968). This research has found that scarcity enhances the desirability of experiences and objects. Two studies were conducted to test the possibility that these scarcit...