Dynamic and Stochastic Resource Economics: Essays on Biodiversity, Invasive Species, Joint Systems, and Regulation

Abstract

Sixteen papers, most previously published, provide a representative account of where the literature in five specific areas of natural resource and environmental economics-natural resource management, biological diversity, ecological economics, invasive species management, and environmental regulation-presently stands. Papers discuss some aspects of the management of a stochastically developing forest; the choice between the stocking rate and time in range management; alternate decision rules, the flexibility premium, and land development over time and under uncertainty; alternate strategies for managing resistance to antibiotics and pesticides; an optimal stopping approach to the conservation of biodiversity; habitat conversion, information acquisition, and the conservation of biodiversity; a theoretical analysis of habitat conversion and biodiversity conservation over time and under uncertainty; the optimal management of a class of aquatic ecological-economic systems; necessary and sufficient conditions for the equivalence of economic and ecological criteria in range management; aspects of the management of ecological-economic systems with a safe minimum standard; a theoretical analysis of random inspections and fines in invasive species management; trade, the damage from alien species, and the effects of protectionism under alternative market structures; an analysis of inspections when economic cost reduction matters more than biological invasion damage control; the consistency and optimality in a dynamic game of pollution control--monopoly; a stochastic model of waste management with on- and off-site storage; and the impact of innovation on a polluting firm's regulation-driven decision to upgrade its capital stock. Batabyal is Arthur J. Gosnell Professor of Economics at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Index.