Economic impacts of closing national forests for commercial timber production in Florida and Liberty County

The paper assesses the impacts of a proposed policy, which suggests a ban on commercial timber harvest in the US national forests. Specifically, this study examines the effect of this policy on a small forest dependent county (Liberty County) in Florida and Florida State by applying a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. The results indicate that the proposed policy would decrease overall economic output by $5 million in Liberty County. The decrease in economic output at the state level in response to this policy is only $1 million. Results suggest that the welfare index in response to the proposed policy will drop by 2.9% in Liberty County while the change at the state level is negligible. At the county level, where limited alternate opportunities for labor and capital mobility, the negative effect of the proposed policy is shown to have a multiplying effect.     

Rhetoric and hegemony in consumptive wildlife tourism: polarizing sustainability discourses among angling tourism stakeholders

Nature-based tourism frequently results in controversies over access rights, but also over how resources should be managed and utilized. In this article, we explore disagreements on management strategies and angling practices, which followed in the wake of the gradual introduction of increasingly strict harvest regulations in salmon angling in the Orkla River of Norway. Different views on what represent the most severe threats to the salmon stock appeared in this case to originate in rather complex patterns with respect to the ways stakeholders related to and engaged with salmon, rivers and nature in general. The identification of incompatible goals and motives of various categories of stakeholders has for long been a dominant approach in research on these types of conflicts. In this contribution, we broaden the scope by exploring how such controversies involve competition for hegemony with respect to how management and angling practices should be discursively framed.     

多哈回合早期收获与《贸易便利化协定》

WTO多哈回合谈判历经十余年陷入僵局,但2013年12月在巴厘部长级会议上终于达成了早期收获,其中最大的成果就是《贸易便利化协定》达成了实质性合意。该协定内容丰富,在贸易便利化方面具有突破性的进展。从国际条约法方面看,还处于缔结程序中的该协定是未来WTO《多哈回合谈判最终文件》的一部分,并且也是"一揽子协议"。从国际组织法方面看,该协定的实施将会遵循WTO和WCO的合作模式,WCO将会发挥很大的作用。该协定合意的达成对于中国口岸和海关制度的改革具有很大意义,将会促进中国现代化海关制度的建成。     

Guangzhou,The Spring City

Guangzhou is an ancient city with a history of 2800 years. It is named ＂the spring city＂ because with long summer the cityis always with green plants and blooming with fresh flowers all years round. Myth legend tells of Guangzhou was founded by Five Immortals riding five rams,     

Carbon Subsidies,Taxes and Optimal Forest Management

We consider the effect of carbon credit payment schemes on forest owners’ land use and harvest decisions. We study two possible credit allocation regimes: one where credits are allocated according to the actual amount of carbon sequestered by the trees on a piece of land and another where credits are allocated according to the long-run potential to sequester carbon on the land. Using a real options model with uncertain future timber prices, we examine the effect on the timing of harvests and the replanting-abandonment decision. We show that both schemes discourage deforestation. Compensating growers for actual carbon sequestration leads to longer rotation periods between harvests, while basing compensation only on the long-run potential level of sequestration induces shorter rotation periods. The former scheme leads to greater benefits of carbon sequestration at lower cost than the latter scheme. Although inducing moderate levels of sequestration is expensive under both schemes, the cost falls dramatically when the level of payments climbs above some threshold. Indeed, providing the payments are sufficiently generous, carbon credit payment schemes offer an effective means of increasing carbon sequestration. The views expressed in this paper are strictly those of the authors and do not represent the views of the New Zealand Commerce Commission. We thank Lewis Evans and two anonymous referees for many very helpful comments. Kevin Counsell, Steen Videbeck, and participants at an ISCR seminar also provided useful suggestions. Fletcher Forests Ltd and the New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry generously provided data.     

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.     

美式期权模型下的可再生资源最优收获

伴随人类社会的进步,可再生资源的地位越来越重要,但是可再生资源同样面临着日益枯竭的问题,可再生资源的最优管理成为资源经济学研究的重点。文章在传统可再生资源收获最优停止点模型的基础上引入金融期权模型,求解可再生资源合理利用的最优停止点,并提出利用金融期权的思路来对可再生资源进行管理。     

Fishing Technology and Optimal Distribution of Harvest Rates

This paper examines the problem of the optimal management of a joint-ownership fishing exploitation, where agents use different fishing gears. We consider a model in which the fishing activity may affect resource growth, not only through the harvest function but also through the natural growth rate of the resource. This allows us to capture the fact that some fishing gears alter the natural growth rate of the resource. We find that when the natural growth of the resource is altered by the fishing technology, the optimal stock is not independent of how harvest quotas are distribute among the agents. As a result, a fishing policy that firstly determines the optimum stock and, secondly, decides how to distribute the harvest among the different agents, will not be efficient. We also analyze the joint determination of optimal stock and harvest quotas and show that positive harvest quotas will only be optimal when countries are characterized by certain asymmetries.     

评价林业投资的实物期权方法

评价风险较高的林业投资,传统的净现值法(NPV)容易低估项目的价值,不能客观地对林业投资做出正确评价。林业项目的不确定性反映了林业投资具有一定的期权特性,因此本文基于实物期权的理论和方法,建立了林木采伐的实物期权决策模型,将林木收益问题当作一个实物期权问题处理,应用实物期权模型来决定林木最佳采伐时机。     

汉代祈农与籍田仪式及其重农精神

中国古代的农事祀典源远流长,两汉时期渐次建立起以祀神与亲耕活动为主体的祈农籍田仪式,大力倡导重农文化精神,从而形成了汉代熔宗教、治策和文化于一炉的农政传统,对后世礼制文化产生深远影响。本文从仪式传统与农事文化的双重维度切入,透过先秦源流的追溯、汉制的复原和汉儒话语的解读,探究其内涵,再现汉代农政文化的历史真相。