Most struggling citizens wait for hours in long lines to buy scarce gasoline or bread.
At the foundation, Mr. Himes helped conceive a $230 million acquisition fund to give developers of lower-income housing an edge in competing with market-rate developers to buy scarce city land.
The eyes of our 24-year-old nephew, Kolya, and his architect friend, Nadia, rolled in bored disbelief one night as we recalled a scramble to buy scarce canned peas in Moscow in 1984.The young are free of any nostalgia for the security of Soviet life — a feeling common even among older Russians who have prospered since its demise.
He is reported to have anonymously visited starving families at night and distributed gold coins to help them buy scarce food.
To buy scarcer items, Cubans used to need the currency used by tourists – the CUC (Convertible Unit of Currency), which can be used at "dollar stores" which offer a far wider variety of goods.
With antiques and art, investors are buying a scarce resource that will only get scarcer over time.
Federal Reserve officials are widely expected to lower interest rates for the fifth time this year on Tuesday, but beyond that incentives to buy may be scarce.
The law of supply and demand predicted a common-sense result: When private land is scarce, buying a big chunk for a new reserve jacks up prices, which makes it more expensive to buy private land in the future.
When goods were scarce and people bought what they could get, it was hardly necessary to understand consumer psychology.
When it comes to purchase satisfaction, consumers are no more likely to like a product just because it seemed scarce when they bought it, Carranza said, citing studies.
