Strategic Preemption in a Common Property Resource: A Continuous Time Approach

The threat of future entry affects the exploitation of common property resources in important ways. An incumbent has a strategic incentive to manipulate the resource stock to deter entry or to harvest more stock prior to entry rather than share the resource with the entrant. It is possible that the threat of potential entry can lead to the extinction of the resource even though actual competition would result in a steady state with a positive stock level.     

Optimal Management of Multiple Renewable Resource Stocks: An Application to Minke Whales

Most bioeconomic models of efficient renewable resource management are constructed for a single harvesting ground. A bioeconomic model is developed in this paper to study the optimal management of renewable resources that are found in spatially distinct harvesting grounds. The model is applied to Minke whale management. Important inter-regional substitution effects are shown to exist. In addition, comparison with previous studies shows that multiple stock management is necessary for efficient management. Finally, the current Minke whale moratorium is shown to be inefficient unless significant nonmarket values exist.     

The economic costs of biological predation

This paper developes a bioeconomic model to analyse the economic losses from the reduced harvesting of prey species resulting from an increase in the stock of a natural predator. Examples of large mammals creating economic damage are whales and African elephants. The economic losses depend critically on the actual management of the prey stock, although the three measures we develop are equal when the stock is managed so as to maximize the sustained economic rent from the prey species. Predation losses are illustrated by the case of the Northeastern Atlantic Minke whale, where the estimate of the average predation cost per whale in 1991–1992 is between $US 1780 and $US 2370, using Norwegian cost and earnings data. A ten percent stock increase is estimated to cause a loss of almost $US 19 million to the fishers of the prey species. If half of this cost were assigned to Norway it would be equivalent to 2.8 and 6.7 percent of the gross profits of the Norwegian cod and herring fisheries, respectively.     

Marginal Valuation of Charismatic Species: Implications for Conservation

Most contingent valuation studies focus on total willingness to pay (WTP) as a measure of welfare change. For policy involving species preservation, however, it is important to distinguish between the benefits of preventing a species from going extinct and the benefits of preserving numbers above the minimum viable population (MVP) level. Once MVP is exceeded, marginal WTP becomes relevant. These propositions are illustrated for the case of one charismatic species whose management is much debated, minke whales in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean. It is shown that, for a given estimate of total preservation value, strict conservation and extinction can both be optimal. This finding highlights the importance of collecting marginal values in contingent valuation surveys.     

The unintended consequences of easy money: How access to finance impedes entrepreneurship

This paper investigates the manner in which economic policy promotes entrepreneurship, and how this relates to the monetary sources of the business cycle. Whilst access to finance is commonly seen as a crucial means to generate economic growth, efforts to expand the money supply beyond the stock of real savings leads to systemic crises. Therefore the admirable policy goal of promoting more credit for entrepreneurs—whether through access to finance, SME support or regional development—can lead to negative unintended consequences.     

Optimal fishery harvesting rules under uncertainty

This paper derives the optimal fishery harvest policy in a real-option model with a stochastic logistic growth process, harvest-sensitive output price, and both fixed and variable harvesting costs. The policy specifies the harvest trigger and harvest size, while outputs from the model include the value of the fishery and the risk of extinction. The optimal policy is illustrated with data from the Pacific Halibut Fishery. For this particular case, the optimal policy recommends harvesting when the fish stock rises to about three-quarters the environmental carrying capacity, and the amount harvested should be approximately a quarter of the prevailing stock. This harvesting policy maximizes the value of the fishery, and importantly, the resulting risk of extinction is negligible. We also carry out some sensitivity analysis to see how the optimal policy (and the resulting fishery value and risk of extinction) change when the input parameters are varied, particularly the ecological parameters intrinsic growth rate and volatility of the stock, and also the economic parameters that have been ignored in previous papers (price sensitivity and fixed cost). If the optimal policy is followed, the risk of extinction will be negligible, except for very low growth rate and high volatility.     

Relative consumption and renewable resource extraction under alternative property-rights regimes

This paper presents a simple model of resource extraction where preferences are defined over the individual’s consumption level, her effort and the comparison of her consumption with that of other members of the community. Our specification captures the intuition that lies behind the growing body of empirical evidence that places interpersonal comparisons as a key determinant of well-being. We consider the effect of consumption externalities under two alternative property-rights regimes: perfect property rights and open access. We identify two dimensions along which consumption externalities distort the efficient exploitation of resources, or, in the case of open access, aggravate the over-exploitation of resources: (i) the static trade-off between consumption and leisure, and (ii) the dynamic trade-off between current and future consumption. In general, envious agents over-exploit the natural resource stock, resulting in a steady-state stock lower than the efficient level chosen by a central planner. We propose a tax mechanism to induce the first-best outcome.     

A Bioeconomic Analysis of the Northern Baltic Salmon Fishery: Coexistence versus Exclusion of Competing Sequential Fisheries

We develop a bioeconomic model of the northern Balticsalmon fishery that takes into account thesimultaneous harvest of wild and reared salmon. Weassess the optimal harvest allocation between thecommercial offshore, inshore, and estuary fisheries,and the recreational river fishery that sequentiallyharvest the salmon stock. We restrict the solution tospawning stocks sufficient to preserve the wildsalmon. Empirical results suggest closure of theoffshore and inshore fisheries. Optimal managementenhances the wild stock, and results in substantialeconomic gains to the fishery. Current fisheryregulation improves the performance of the fisheryover open access, but fails to utilize the fullproductive potential of the resource.     

Platform competition and seller investment incentives

Many products and services are not sold on open platforms but on competing for-profit platforms, which charge buyers and sellers for access. What is the effect of for-profit intermediation on seller investment incentives? Since for-profit intermediaries reduce the available rents in the market, one might naively suspect that sellers have weaker investment incentives with competing for-profit platforms. However, we show that for-profit intermediation may lead to overinvestment when free access would lead to underinvestment because investment decisions affect the strength of indirect network effects and, thus, access prices. We characterize the effect of for-profit intermediation on investment incentives depending on the nature of the investment and on which side of the market singlehomes.     

Shared Renewable Resources: Gains from Trade and Trade Policy

This paper examines the effects of international trade and trade policy in a two‐country, two‐good model with an open‐access renewable resource that is internationally shared. We show that both countries may still benefit from trade when they specialize in the production of their comparative advantage good, although the shared resource is reduced by trade. In addition, we demonstrate that the steady state utility of a resource‐good importing country may be reduced by trade, even if it specializes in the production of a non‐resource good. Import tariffs and export taxes on a resource good may increase or decrease the shared stock level depending on the production patterns in a trading steady state. The trade policy is likely to be Pareto‐improving when the shared stock rises, while both countries may be made worse off by the trade policy when the shared stock falls.     

The stock market and investment in the small and open Norwegian economy

The relationship between the stock market and investment is analyzed by utilizing a multivariate vector autoregressive model, which also includes fundamentals represented by production and the bank interest rate. Two important results appear on the basis of data from the small, open economy of Norway. The financial market has no lead effect on real activity, as neither the stock market nor the credit market can predict future investment or production. On the contrary, current stock returns correlate negatively with lagged growth in investment, and positively with current growth in production. In addition, changes in the bank interest rate have a positive effect on future stock returns, production leads investment positively, and both production and the bank interest rate become exogenous variables in our model. First version received: November 1997/Final version received: October 2000     

Open access,common property and scarcity rent in fisheries

Open access resources are frequently not managed efficiently, resulting in falling stock levels and a declining income for fishermen. In the late 1970's, the policy response to this problem was the implementation of 200-mile fishing zones, which enabled the European Union to formulate and implement the Common Fisheries Policy, aimed at (among other things) conservation and distribution of available stocks. In Germany, this shift from an open access regime towards a common property regime had favourable outcomes. The trend of falling prices was reversed. The conclusion was that intertemporal efficiency had increased as a result of (inter)governmental policy. Apparently, a wedge was formed between price and marginal harvesting costs, implying that scarcity rent had returned as a component of prices.     

International Management Strategies for a Straddling Fish Stock: A Bio-Economic Simulation Model of the Norwegian Spring-Spawning Herring Fishery

In this paper, a three-country dynamic bio-economic simulation model is presented for the spring-spawning herring fishery. The international spring-spawning herring fishery, based on potentially one of the most valuable fish stocks in the world, is currently recovering from a severe depletion of the stock and subsequent harvesting moratorium. Management of the herring fishery is complicated by its multi-nation exploitation, due to the highly migratory behaviour of the species moving between several coastal state zones (exclusive economic zones, EEZs) and the high seas (Ocean Loop). Based on extensive work invested on analysing both the biology of the herring stock and the fisheries economics around its exploitation we study here the profiles of different multi-agent management schemes, simulating catch levels, stock size and profit potentials of alternative management strategies. The stock dynamics are described by a linear discrete-time age-structured population model and the economics are presented by a rent maximising model with constant price of herring catch and different costs of harvesting and efficiency levels for the different national fleets. The simulations, carried out over several decades, show that the benefits of international co-operation far exceed the returns of a competitive open access fishery.JEL Classifications: C7, C15, Q22     

国企改革激励机制的另类思考--进入权

进入权可作为激励机制改革的另一种思考,其作为激励机制在国企改革中应用的具有可行性。在我国目前状况下进入权相对于年薪制、股权及股票期权激励具有优势,并可作为现有激励机制的补充,一同推动国企激励机制的改革。     

Property Rights, Renewable Resources and Economic Development

This paper analyzes the role of endogenous property rights in the development of an open resource-based economy. I incorporate renewable resources and endogenous decisions on property rights into a convex growth model with the formal and informal sectors. I find that along the transition path to steady state, property rights enforcement is not constant but improves with time as well as involves intermediate property rights specification (between open access and perfect property rights). International trade and labor market are driving these endogenous changes. Property rights improve with favorable terms of trade when the economy exports resource services and stronger property rights help maintain the resource stock by deterring illegal harvest. This pushes labor away from the informal harvest sector toward greater participation in the formal sector of the economy. In turn, more labor participation in the formal sector along with capital formation increase the country’s output and consumption. Overall, with an open economy and well-functioning institutions, renewable resources have a positive impact on economic growth.     

General Equilibrium Tragedy of the Commons

Many poor economies depend on open access resources for their livelihoods. Households in resource-based economies allocate their time and other factors between resource extraction and other activities. As a result, factors may shift from one sector to another as marginal returns change. This has two important implications. First, it implies potentially strong linkages between resource and non-resource sectors. Second, it means that unmanaged resources cause inefficient allocations of inputs across all sectors, and the effects of resource management spill into other sectors. We construct a local general equilibrium model that accounts for inputs that over-allocate to an open access resource and create a general equilibrium tragedy of the commons. This model describes resource rent dissipation more adequately in economies with mobile factors than a model with slowly dissipating rents. Perfectly mobile factors dissipate rent in every period, but endogenous wages cause labor and capital allocations to change with the resource stock. We use the model to illustrate medium-run impacts of a limit on capital in an artisanal fishery in Honduras. Simulation results reveal that fishery management has economy-wide impacts on prices and wages. Managers in developing countries thus should consider these linkages when implementing policies to conserve fish stocks.     

A Stackelberg Game Model of Trade in Renewable Resources with Competitive Sellers*

We model international trade in renewable resources between a single buyer and competitive sellers as a Stackelberg differential game. The buyer uses unit and ad valorem tariffs to indirectly encourage conservation of the renewable resource under study. First, we show that the efficacy of these trade policy instruments in promoting conservation depends fundamentally on whether harvesting costs are stock dependent or independent. When harvesting costs are stock independent, the optimal open‐loop tariffs are dynamically consistent. In contrast, when harvesting costs are stock dependent, the optimal open‐loop tariffs are dynamically inconsistent. Secondly, we point out that whether the terminal value of the resource stock is higher with the stock independent or the stock dependent cost function cannot be resolved unambiguously. Thirdly, we show that it does not make sense for the buyer to use both tariffs simultaneously. Finally, we discuss the implications of these and other findings for renewable resource conservation in general.     

Renewable Resources,Pollution and Trade

Detrimental spillovers from industrial activity onto resource‐based productive sectors are very common, yet their effects remain understudied. While international trade often creates conditions for the over‐exploitation of open‐access renewable resources, it also provides opportunities for separating different productive sectors spatially. The existing literature suggests that a diversified exporter of the renewable resource good tends to lose from trade in both welfare and conservation terms as a result of over‐depletion, while the exporter of the non‐resource good gains. However, the resource stock externality of harvesting and the inter‐industry pollution externality often coexist in reality. In a small open economy framework, this paper shows that acknowledging their interaction changes the nature of the autarkic equilibrium and enriches the set of resource conservation and welfare outcomes from trade. Depending on the relative damage inflicted by the two industries on the environment, which in turn are functions of the pollution intensity and bioeconomic parameters, it is possible that the inter‐sectoral pollution externality persists and specialization in manufacturing is not optimal from a welfare perspective.     

International trade between consumer and conservationist countries

We consider trade between a ‘consumer’ country with an open access renewable resource and a ‘conservationist’ country that regulates resource harvesting to maximize domestic steady-state utility. In what we call the mild overuse case, the consumer country exports the resource good and suffers steady-state losses from trade, as suggested by the conventional wisdom that weak resource management standards confer a competitive advantage on domestic firms in the resource sector but cause welfare losses. Strikingly, however, when the resource stock is most in jeopardy, the conservationist country exports the resource good in steady state and both countries experience gains from trade.     

Density and Integration Effects on Class I U.S. Freight Railroads

We investigate some technological aspects of railroading relevant to the debate on open access by estimating a multiproduct cost function with both operational outputs and infrastructure maintenance outputs. We find strong cost complementarities among operational outputs, but not between operations and infrastructure. The latter result implies that at the levels of output that characterize freight rail operations in the U.S. there may be no inherent technological advantages from vertical integration. The former suggests though (for reasons that we develop below) that competitive access alone will not necessarily lead to competitive outcomes in rail freight markets.