Invention, innovation and R&D behaviors in non-renewable resource markets: the case of oil.

Summary In this work we try to see how we can reconsider the neo-Hotellinian analysis through the prism of r&d and technological innovation. We try to appreciate how the phenomena of r&d efforts, incentives to innovate or the timing of innovation amend the basic r% rule and allow us to explain some of the stylized facts observable in the markets of non-renewable resources, and particularly in the market of crude oil. Methodologically, we situate ourselves in the mining paradigm developed by h. Hotelling and Gray, i.e. in a neoclassical logic of agents and the market. This choice corresponds to a desire to conduct a theoretical rather than a pragmatic analysis of the relations between the natural resource sectors and technological innovation. Our research is structured around a division based on the distinction between the problems of firm decisions and those of market strategies.