The widely followed contest originated in the pages of Social Science Quarterly, where Simon challenged Ehrlich to put his money where his mouth was.
In response to Ehrlich's published claim that "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000", Simon offered to take that bet, or, more realistically, "to stake US$10,000 ... on my belief that the cost of non-government-controlled raw materials (including grain and oil) will not rise in the long run".
Simon challenged Ehrlich to choose any raw material he wanted and a date more than a year away, and he would wager on the inflation-adjusted prices decreasing as opposed to increasing.
Ehrlich and his colleagues picked five metals that they thought would undergo big price increases: chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten.
Ehrlich added that he and fellow scientists viewed renewable resources as more important indicators of the state of planet Earth, but that he decided to go along with the bet anyway.
[3] Asset manager Jeremy Grantham wrote that if the Simon-Ehrlich wager had been for a longer period (from 1980 to 2011), then Simon would have lost on four of the five metals.
[7] However, economist Mark J. Perry noted that for an even longer period of time, from 1934 to 2013, the inflation-adjusted price of the Dow Jones-AIG Commodities Index showed "an overall significant downward trend" and concluded that Simon was "more right than lucky".
E.g., he pointed out that, due to increased efficiency, the amount of cropland required and actually used to grow food for each person has decreased over time and is likely to continue to do so [10]: 5 .
[12] In 1996, Simon bet $1,000 with David South, professor of the Auburn University School of Forestry, that the inflation-adjusted price of timber would decrease in the following five years.