Resource Economics

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, Oct 28, 1999 - Business & Economics - 213 pages
Resource Economics is a text for students with a background in calculus, intermediate microeconomics, and a familiarity with the spreadsheet software Excel. The book covers basic concepts, shows how to set up spreadsheets to solve dynamic allocation problems, and presents economic models for fisheries, forestry, nonrenewable resources, stock pollutants, option value, and sustainable development. Within the text, numerical examples are posed and solved using Excel's Solver. Through these examples and additional exercises at the end of Chapters 1 through 8, students can make dynamic models operational, develop their economic intuition, and learn how to set up spreadsheets for the simulation of optimization of resource and environmental systems.
 

Selected pages

Contents

Basic Concepts
8
Discounting
8
A DiscreteTime Extension of the Method of Lagrange Multipliers
9
Questions and Exercises
16
Solving Numerical Allocation Problems
19
An Optimal Depletion Problem
23
An Optimal Harvest Problem
27
Questions and Exercises
31
The Economic Measure of Scarcity
96
Questions and Exercises
98
Stock Pollutants
101
The CommodityResidual Transformation Frontier
102
Damage Functions and Welfare
104
A Degradable Stock Pollutant
107
Diffusion and a Nondegradable Stock Pollutant
113
Recycling
120

The Economics of Fisheries
32
Fishery Production Functions
35
The YieldEffort Function
36
The Static Model of Open Access
37
The Dynamic Model of Open Access
39
Static Rent Maximization by a Sole Owner
41
Present Value Maximization
44
Traditional Management Policies
49
Bioeconomic Management Policies
52
ITQ Programs in New Zealand Australia and Canada
54
Questions and Exercises
57
The Economics of Forestry
59
The Volume Function and Mean Annual Increment
60
The Optimal Single Rotation
62
The Faustmann Rotation
63
An Example
65
Timber Supply
68
The Optimal Stock of OldGrowth Forest
70
Questions and Exercises
75
The Economics of Nonrenewable Resources
77
A Simple Model
78
Hotellings Rule
79
The Inverse Demand Curve
80
Extraction and Price Paths in the Competitive Industry
82
Extraction and Price Paths under Monopoly
86
ReserveDependent Costs
88
Exploration
91
Emission Taxes and Marketable Pollution Permits
123
Questions and Exercises
130
Option Value and Risky Development
137
CostBenefit Analysis
138
Option Value in a Simple TwoPeriod Model
144
Option Value An InfiniteHorizon Model
146
The Trigger Values for Irreversible Decisions
150
Questions and Exercises
160
Sustainable Development
162
Sustainable Development as a Steady State
163
Intergenerational Altruism and the Stock of a Renewable Resource
164
Coevolution
169
Adaptive Development
178
A Requiem for Sustainable Development?
181
Questions and Exercises
183
Annotated Bibliography
185
Basic Concepts
186
Solving Numerical Allocation Problems
187
The Economics of Fisheries
189
The Economics of Forestry
191
The Economics of Nonrenewable Resources
193
Stock Pollutants
198
Option Value and Risky Development
200
Sustainable Development
202
Index
205
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