Scarcity

The concept is central to economics from its origins. Adam Smith grappled with it in The Wealth of Nations (1776), noting that price reflects supply relative to demand — a direct expression of scarcity. Its formal position as the discipline's bedrock was established in 1932 when Lionel Robbins defined economics itself as "the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between given ends and scarce means which have alternative uses" — a definition that dominated the field for the rest of the 20th century.