From unemployed to entrepreneur: The role of the absolute bequest motive

Using the British Household Panel Survey, this paper finds that inheritance has a concave effect on the hours worked by male entrepreneurs. Receiving an inheritance increases the labor supply of unemployed male entrepreneurs; however this effect becomes smaller for higher inheritances.     

Renewable resource management with environmental prediction

Variations in environmental conditions affect renewable resource growth. The ability to predict such variations is improving, providing scope for improved management. We generalize a common stochastic stock recruitment model to explore how optimal management changes with environmental prediction. We obtain three main results. First, while it might seem that a prediction of adverse future conditions should lead to more conservative management, the opposite may be true. Second, optimal management requires only a one-period-ahead forecast, suggesting forecast accuracy is more important than forecast lead time. Finally, we derive conditions on environmental fluctuations guaranteeing positive optimal harvest in every period.
Gestion d'une ressource renouvelable quand on prédit les conditions futures de l'environnement. Les variations dans les conditions de l'environnement affectent la croissance de la ressource renouvelable. La capacitéà prévoir ces variations s'améliore et ouvre la possibilité d'améliorer la gestion de la ressource. Les auteurs utilisent un modèle de ressource renouvelable avec croissance stochastique et obtiennent trois résultats. D'abord, alors qu'il peut sembler que des prévisions pessimistes de conditions difficiles dans l'avenir peuvent conduire à une gestion plus conservatrice, le contraire peut être vrai. Ensuite, la gestion optimale requiert seulement une prédiction pour la prochaine période: voilà qui suggère qu'il est plus important d'avoir une prévision exacte que d'avoir des prévisions à plus long terme. Enfin, on développe les conditions pour les fluctuations de l'environnement qui garantissent une récolte positive optimale à chaque période.     

Renewable resource management with stock externalities: Coastal aquifers and submarine groundwater discharge

We model coastal groundwater management and its effects on submarine groundwater discharge, nearshore marine water quality, and marine biota. Incorporating the stock externality effects on nearshore resources increases the optimal sustainable steady-state levels of both the aquifer head and the stock of a keystone native algae species. Numerical simulations are illustrated using data from the Kuki’o region on the Island of Hawaii. Two different approaches for incorporating the nearshore resource are examined. Including algae's market value in the objective function results in only slightly lower rates of groundwater extraction. When a minimum constraint is placed on the stock of the keystone species, however, greater conservation may be indicated. The constraint also results in non-monotonic paths of water extraction, head level, and marginal opportunity cost of water in the optimal solution.     

Renewable resource management with environmental prediction: the importance of structural specification

Environmental variability can substantially influence renewable resource growth, and as the ability to forecast environmental conditions improves, opportunities for adaptive management emerge. Using a stochastic stock‐recruitment model, Costello, et al. ( 2001 ) show the optimal management response to a prediction of favourable growth conditions is to reduce current harvests. We find this result may be reversed when environmental variability and stock are substitutes in growth, a possibility that has been ignored by resource economists. As an example, we analyze the South Carolina white shrimp fishery, finding the optimal response to a prediction of favourable overwinter conditions is to increase fall harvests.     

Time consuming resource extraction in an overlapping generations economy with capital

For worldwide fisheries production, two major trends emerge for the next decades: a significantly larger role for aquaculture and reduced output due to climate change impacts. While the former leads to an increase in cost, the latter affects natural regeneration. To address both impacts, we investigate the relevance of resource extraction costs for a private property fishery in an intertemporal general equilibrium model with capital accumulation, commodity production and a labor market. We show how the extraction cost parameter—in addition to time preference, technology and natural regeneration—matters for the existence (and stability) of an economically feasible, nontrivial stationary state. Higher extraction costs increase the equilibrium resource stock, while a reduced regeneration rate (e.g. due to climate change) decreases the stock. Moreover, resource extraction overshoots its new equilibrium value after the cost shock while after a regeneration shock extraction levels adjust monotonically towards the new equilibrium.     

Natural resources, capital accumulation and the resource curse

Early concern by economists for the effect of natural capital on economic growth gave way to complacency and neglect during the nineteenth century. Evidence has emerged, however, that since the 1960s the economic performance of low-income countries has been inversely related to their natural resource wealth. This relationship is not a deterministic one so policy counts. SEEA can help improve the policy and performance of resource-abundant low-income countries by reinforcing the rationale for the sound management of natural resources and also by providing an index of policy sustainability in the form of the net saving rate. This policy index, along with other measures such as a capital fund for sterilizing the rent, initiatives to increase the transparency of rent flows and the rigorous evaluation of alternative uses of additional public sector revenue can improve the efficiency by which natural resource rent is transformed into alternative forms of capital to sustain rising social welfare. Chad and Mauritania provide case studies to illustrate how SEEA and net saving can be used to diagnose policy failure and improve economic performance.     

Renewable resource management, user heterogeneity, and the scope for cooperation

Cooperation can increase the efficiency of commonly-owned renewable resource use. However, received knowledge is that, absent side payments, cooperative solutions are more difficult to achieve the less homogenous the agents involved. We revisit this claim by analyzing how differences in the opportunity costs of resource harvesting affect the scope for Pareto-improving contracts, where contracting is with respect to the type of technology used. We find that the scope for cooperation is largest for intermediate levels of heterogeneity.     

Renewable resource regulation and uncertain prices: The role of financial structure and bankruptcy

We analyze the interaction between regulatory policies and the financial structure of a fishery and show that firms with debts may respond differently to regulations than firms that have not accumulated debts. There are conditions where more stringent regulation is counterproductive, providing a perverse incentive to increase harvesting effort. We show that optimal regulation depends on the sector's financial structure, and demonstrate that there are cases when intervention is counterproductive, or too costly to implement. There are also cases where successful regulatory intervention can only be implemented when accompanied by a sufficiently large subsidy.     

Taxes on capital in a specific factor model with international capital mobility

The efficiency and distributional effects of sundry capital taxes are analyzed in a simple two-sector specific factor model where capital is mobile both between the two sectors and between the home country and the rest of the world. Two cases are discussed: the small country case where factor and commodity prices are parametric; and the large country case. The optimal tax on capital export is illustrated when commodity prices are parametric. A simple approach to the case when both factor and commodity prices are variable is demonstrated.     

Price discrimination with a resource constraint

Introducing an aggregate resource constraint into Mussa and Rosen's [Mussa, M., Rosen, S., 1978. Monopoly and product quality. Journal of Economic Theory 18 (2), 301–317] model of monopoly price discrimination induces an upwards distortion in product quality for high valuation consumers because the standard downward distortions in product quality for other consumers relax the resource constraint.     

A nearly complete test of a capital accumulating,vertically integrated,nonrenewable resource extracting theory of a competitive firm

A new approach to testing a generalized Hotelling theory of a nonrenewable resource extracting firm is developed. In contrast to approaches extant, it (i) permits empirical testing of all the refutable implications of the theory, (ii) does not require estimates of, or data on, the shadow value of the resource stock, (iii) does not require estimation of the feedback control functions or the necessary conditions associated with the underlying optimal control problem, and (iv) treats the capital stock in a theoretically sound manner in the econometric model. Because of certain limitations in the data, most, but not all, of the refutable implications of the theory are tested using a Bayesian approach. Other limitations in the data mean that the paper is better viewed as an illustration of how one would go about rigorously testing the extended Hotelling theory, rather than as one which presents convincing empirical evidence that supports or refutes it.     

Renewable resource market obeying difference equations: Stable points,stable cycles,and Chaos (1991)

In this paper, the basic principles of the Chaos Theory are applied to dynamic systems involving renewable resource and harvest. The results of simulations are presented regarding harvested resource stock time path. It is shown that stationary steady-state is only one of many different possible outcomes of bioeconomic equilibrium. The varying impacts that different management policies have on an unstable dynamic system are also studied. It is shown that in unstable resource systems, the effects of some policy measures will be very different from the ones obtained through traditional resource analysis. It also shows that policies which induce a stabilizing effect in stock time series will generally provide greater welfare gains. The results are illustrated by two market examples.     

From rent seeking to human capital: a model where resource shocks cause transitions from stagnation to growth

Abstract.  We present a growth model where agents divide time between rent seeking in the form of resource competition and working in a human capital sector. The latter is interpreted as trade or manufacturing. Rent seeking exerts negative externalities on the productivity of human capital. Adding shocks, in the form of fluctuations in the size of the contested resource, the model can replicate a long phase with stagnant incomes and high levels of rent seeking, interrupted by small, failed growth spurts, eventually followed by a permanent transition to a sustained growth path where rent seeking vanishes in the limit. The model also generates a rise and fall of the so-called natural resource curse: before the takeoff, an increase in the size of the contested resource has a positive effect on incomes; shortly after the takeoff, the effect is negative; and on the balanced growth path the growth rate of per capita income is independent of resource shocks.     

Debt and capital accumulation in a two-sector model with non-traded goods

The paper examines optimal debt and capital accumulation for an open economy which faces an imperfect international capital market. The major finding is that the optimal pattern of debt and capital accumulation is affected by relative factor intensities. Factor intensities determine whether substitution or complementary relationships exist between debt and capital. The relationship between the country's net wealth and its two components financial and productive are also determined by factor intensities.     

The dynamics of a banking duopoly with capital regulations

This paper analyses the dynamics of a banking duopoly game with heterogeneous and homogeneous players (as regards the type of expectations' formation), to investigate the effects of the capital requirements introduced by international accords (Basel-I in 1988 and more recently Basel-II and Basel-III), in the context of the Monti-Klein model. This analysis reveals that the policy of introducing a capital requirement tends to stabilise the market equilibrium (both with heterogeneous and homogeneous banks). Moreover, it is shown that 1) when the capital standard is reduced the market stability is lost through a flip bifurcation and subsequently a cascade of flip bifurcations may lead to periodic cycles and chaos; 2) when the expectations are heterogeneous even the case of multi-stability may be present.Therefore, although on the one side the capital regulation is harmful for the equilibrium loans' volume and profit, on the other side it is effective in keeping or restoring the stability of the Cournot–Nash equilibrium in the banking duopoly.     

Dynamic behavior of a simple neoclassical model with wealth and capital unequal

The paper analyzes the standard one-good neoclassical dynamic model in which wages to consumer-workers are paid in IOU's issued by producers. The wealth of consumers consists of their accumulated IOU's and the model differs from the traditional one in that it is not assumed that consumers' wealth is exactly equal to the value of the capital stock. The dynamic behavior of this model turns out to be quite different from the traditional one, the main result being that, in the absence of “excessive savings” by consumers, the golden rule will always be the unique stable steady state.     

Stackelberg leadership in a dynamic duopoly with stochastic capital accumulation

I propose a dynamic duopoly model where firms enter simultaneously but compete hierarchically á la Stackelberg at each instant over time. They accumulate capacity through costly investment, with capital accumulation dynamics being affected by an additive shock the mean and variance of which are known. The main findings are the following. First, the Stackelberg game is uncontrollable by the leader; hence, it is time consistent. Second, the leader invests more than the follower; as a result, in the steady state, the leader’s capacity and profits are larger than the follower’s. Therefore, the present analysis does not confirm Gibrat’s Law, since the individual growth rate is determined by the timing of moves.JEL Classification: C61, C73, D43, D92, L13Financial support within the project The post-entry performance of firms: technology, growth and survival lead by Enrico Santarelli, co-financed by the University of Bologna and MIUR, is gratefully acknowledged. I thank Uwe Cantner, Roberto Cellini, Roberto Golinelli, Helen Louri, Enrico Santarelli, Antonello Scurcu, Peter Thompson, two anonymous referees and the audience at the final workshop of the project (Bologna, November 22-23, 2002) for useful comments and discussion. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Renewable energy drivers: a panel cointegration approach

The expected gains from RES deployment to the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions (CO₂) and the cut-off of external dependence of electricity sources could be important. However, it is crucial to understand the determinants of RES growth to help policymakers drawing effective energy polices, involving a commitment of both citizens and governments. In this paper, we use novel panel econometric tools (taking into account structural breaks and cross-section dependence) and find evidence of nonstationary issues and cointegration issues between renewable energy production and its drivers (CO₂ emissions, GDP per capita, energy use and dependency). The results thus reveal that non-stationary issues should be attended, otherwise they could be biased. Using suitable estimators (DOLS, FMOLS) with two different data sets and different proxies and taking common factors into account by MG estimates, we find that there is no environmental concerns effect explaining the growth of renewables in European countries. However, national revenues, energy consumption (demand effect) and energy dependency have a positive impact on renewables deployment. Considering these results, economic assistance (subsidies) might be a mean to increase further the renewables deployment in EU countries and education about renewables deployment is needed.     

A new interpretation for the precautionary saving motive: a note

This paper proposes a new interpretation for the precautionary saving motive: when future income is uncertain, agents increase saving in order to cause a reduction in the disutility due to uncertainty. Furthermore, the paper shows that the usual necessary and sufficient condition for precautionary saving is the condition ensuring this effect to occur and gives new insights into the relationship between risk aversion indexes and precautionary saving.      

Biological capital theory: a question and a conjecture

A community possesses an empty tract of land, good only for growing trees of a particular type. What is the optimal pattern of planting and harvesting? If utility is convex in consumption it is optimal to plant and harvest periodically. If the utility function is strictly concave our numerical analyses suggest that the forest approaches a balanced state in which the rate of timber production is uniform.