SCARCITY AND AGRICULTURAL LAND RENT IN LIGHT OF THE CAPITAL CONTROVERSY: THREE VIEWS*

This paper examines the different theories of agricultural land rent proposed by the neoclassical, Marxist, and neo-Ricardian schools of economic thought. In so doing the paper undertakes two tasks: first, to explore the different definitions of scarcity that emerge from each school; and secondly to check the consistency between the view of scarcity and the analytical theory of rent that each school proposes. It is concluded that for each of the schools there is an inconsistency between their respective view of scarcity and the corresponding theory of rent, although the reasons for that inconsistency vary. It is further argued that although this inconsistency cannot be resolved for the case of neoclassical economics, there is some prospect of resolution for Marxist and neo-Ricardian theories.