Finding the optimal opening time of harvesting farmed fishery resources

Abstract

As an application of mathematics to engineering problems, this paper formulates a simple optimal stopping problem to decide the opening time of harvesting farmed fishery resources that maximizes an economic objective function. A sufficient condition for unique existence of the internal optimal opening time is provided and its concrete mathematical analysis is carried out. Comparative statics of the optimal opening time clearly reveals its dependence on the parameters of the farming environment. The problem is finally applied to analyzing management of a commercially important fishery resource in Japan.