Things become more complicated if production uses some scarce capital good as well.

Large and small employers are faced with the need to spend scarce capital on education today in order to have better educated workers in the future.

So the poorer nations, already starved for investment, are likely to have to compete for scarce capital.

Mikhail Gorbachev aims to redirect scarce Soviet capital toward domestic economic development.

It now vitiates very scarce capital and technical resources and skills.

The auto maker, which has suffered enormous losses, is trying to direct its scarce capital to core activities like the development of new vehicles.

Mr. Gorbachev is not saying how he will ration scarce capital among farms.

In Europe, he suggests, jobs are created from the top down as big business and big government mobilize scarce capital and expand production capacity.

The energy shortage has made capital even more scarce, as potential investors worry about bottlenecks in industry and agriculture.

With domestic capital scarce and politically problematic, foreign investment becomes the obvious source of funds.