Its scarcity value makes it a useful store of wealth.

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The un-French vendors know how to create scarcity value.

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Until January the company's "ring fence" kept foreign investment below 20%, and the scarcity value of Western shares gave them a 40% to 50% premium above their Moscow price.

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Their scarcity value has allowed privileged airlines such as British Airways to make huge sums out of them: surplus slots are traded behind the scenes for hundreds of millions of pounds.

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Moreover, Prince (who has sold over 100 million records in a 30-year career) may know what a lot of people are still learning: In any market, it is important to either deliver abundant commodities cheaply and efficiently, or cater to high-value scarcity.

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As long as a proper cap is in place that creates a value for environmental scarcity, carbon trading can be very effective in redirecting investments towards lower-carbon activities and in making human behavior more environmentally sustainable.

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Gold has value due to its scarcity, yet the market is large enough to allow sufficient liquidity, Artigas said.

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The most elementary principle of economics is that the value of a commodity increases with its scarcity.

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And Stalk points out that air freight, thought to save the day for lightweight or high-value goods, is facing its own overload from unbuilt runways and a scarcity of planes.

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