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Unexpected increases of natural resource prices can generate rents, value that should be recovered by the State to minimize inefficiencies, avoid arbitrary discrimination between citizens and keep a sustainable trajectory. As a case study about private appropriation of natural resource rent, this work explores the case of copper in Chile since 1990, empirically analyzing if the 12 main private mining companies have recovered in present value more than their investment during their life cycle. The results of this exercise, applicable to other natural resources, indicate that some actually have, capturing about US$ 40 billion up to 2012. Elaborating an adequate institutional framework for future deposits remain important challenges for Chile to plentifully take advantage of its mining potential, as well as for any country with an abundant resource base to better enjoy its natural wealth. For that purpose, a concession known as Least Present Value Revenue (LPVR) is proposed., Comment: 24 pages, in Spanish

Growth theory has rarely considered energy despite its invisible hand in all physical systems. We develop a theoretical framework that places energy transfers at centerstage of growth theory based on two principles: (1) goods are material rearrangements and (2) such rearrangements are done by energy transferred by prime movers (e.g. workers, engines). We derive the implications of these principles for an autarkic agent that maximizes utility subject to an energy budget constraint and maximizes energy surplus to relax such constraint. The solution to these problems shows that growth is driven by positive marginal energy surplus of energy goods (e.g. rice, oil), yet materializes through prime mover accumulation. This perspective brings under one framework several results from previous attempts to insert energy within growth theory, reconciles economics with natural sciences, and provides a basis for a general reinterpretation of economics and growth as the interplay between human desires and thermodynamic processes., Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures

The observed proportionality between nominal prices and average embodied energies cannot be interpreted with conventional economic theory. A model is presented that places energy transfers as the focal point of scarcity based on the idea that (1) goods are material rearrangements, and (2) humans can only rearrange matter with energy transfers. Modified consumer and producer problems for an autarkic agent show that the opportunity cost of goods are given by their marginal energy transfers, which depend on subjective and objective factors (e.g. consumer preferences and direct energy transfers). Allowing for exchange and under perfect competition, nominal prices arise as social manifestations of goods' marginal energy transfers. The proportionality between nominal prices and average embodied energy follows given the relation between the latter and marginal energy transfers., Comment: 27 pages including appendices, 1 figure, 44 equations