Scarcity is the fundamental economic problem that arises because people have unlimited wants but resources are limited. Because of scarcity, various economic decisions must be made to allocate resources efficiently.
Scarcity states that society
has insufficient productive resources to fulfill all human wants and needs.
Alternatively, scarcity implies that not all of society's goals can be pursued
at the same time; trade-offs are made of one good against others. In an
influential 1932 essay, Lionel Robbins defined economics as "the science
which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means
which have alternative uses."