renewable natural resource management and use without markets natural resources by their nature are not readily bent to the status of private property efficient resource use is complicated by jurisdictional externalities public goods non use values and beneficiaries spatially separated from the location of resources the task is made more challenging by ecological complexity that obscures cause benefits and effects costs and dramatic time lags between individual actions and subsequent social consequences that together with substantial uncertainty introduce the chance of irreversibilities resource economists have played a major role in the literature on externalities the development of individual transferable quotas non market valuation techniques and common property management

the impact of age structure uncertainty and asymmetric spatial dynamics on regulatory performance in a fishery metapopulation failure to manage the harvest of a metapopulation at its underlying ecological scale can lead to extirpation of discrete subpopulations and reduce productivity however it may be difficult and costly to assess and manage stocks at a finer spatial scale and there is generally greater uncertainty about the size of substocks than about the aggregate stock we use a two patch age structured metapopulation model to compare the performance of global vs area specific total allowable catch constraints tacs the relative performance of these approaches in terms of profits and risk of depleting subpopulations depends upon biological technical and economic parameters in particular various kinds of uncertainty aggregation of fish stocks and the spatial dynamics of different age classes surprisingly a global tac is less risky when there is little mixing of the subpopulations as long as target mortality rates are not set too high the advantage of the global tac is reduced when there is mixing and migration between the subpopulations particularly when these dynamics are asymmetric however a regulator naive to the nature of the true spatial dynamics and hence the spatially optimal target fishing mortality rates may still be better off employing a global tac

nature reserves as a bioeconomic management tool a simplified modelling approach this paper demonstrates analytically how a nature reserve may protect the total population realize maximum sustainable yield msy and economic yield ey and how this depends on biological growth migration reserve size and economic parameters the pre reserve population is assumed to follow the logistic growth law and two post reserve growth models are discussed to explore the importance of model assumptions for assessment of reserves the post reserve growth has either a common carrying capacity as in the pre reserve case or each sub population has its own carrying capacity proportionate to its distribution area a combined model as a continuum of the two models is also formulated and briefly discussed population protection against extinction is assured against low cost harvesting including zero cost when relative reserve size is greater than relative migration reserve size may be tuned to realize msy in one model but not in the other economic yield is generally greater in the former but maximum ey cannot be realized in any one

renewable resource economists and policy what differences have we made abstract this paper surveys developments in fisheries economics and fisheries policy over the past half century early work clarified the nature of the economic issues associated with open access laying the groundwork for changes in policies after coastal nations expanded their jurisdictions in 1976 perhaps the most important point made by economists is that property rights matter and that open access conditions create economic as well as biological problems the policy process has begun to create property rights systems although many of the world s fisheries still operate under mixed systems of regulations and open access incentives

taxing capital not a bad idea after all we quantitatively characterize the optimal capital and labor income tax in an overlapping generations model with idiosyncratic uninsurable income shocks and permanent productivity difierences of households the optimal capital income tax rate is signiflcantly positive at 36 percent the optimal progressive labor income tax is roughly a at tax of 23 percent with a deduction of 7 200 relative to average household income of 42 000 the high optimal capital income tax is mainly driven by the life cycle structure of the model whereas the optimal progressivity of the labor income tax is attributable to the insurance and redistribution role of the tax system jel e62 h21 h24

optimal capital income taxation with incomplete markets borrowing constraints and constant discounting for a wide class of infinitely lived agent models chamley has shown that the optimal capital income tax rate is zero in the long run lucas has argued that for the u s economy there is a significant welfare gain from switching to this policy this paper shows that for the bewley class of models with incomplete insurance markets and borrowing constraints the optimal tax rate on capital income is positive even in the long run therefore cutting the capital income tax to zero may well lead to welfare losses

robustly coalition proof incentive mechanisms for public good provision are voting mechanisms and vice versa we study the relation between mechanism design and voting in public good provision if incentive mechanisms must satisfy conditions of robust coalition proofness as well as robust incentive compatibility the participants contributions to public good provision can only depend on the level of the public good that is provided and that level can only depend on the population shares of people favouring one level over another for a public good that comes as a single indivisible unit the outcome depends on whether or not the share of votes in favour of provision exceeds a specified threshold with more provision levels for the public good more complicated mechanisms can be used but they still involve the counting of votes rather than any measurement of the participants willingness to pay the article thus provides a foundation for the use of voting mechanisms

a repeated nested logit model of atlantic salmon fishing participation and site choice for atlantic salmon fishing are modeled in the context of a repeated three level nested logit model consumer s surplus measures are derived for different levels of species availability in the penobscot river the most important salmon river in new england for comparison six other travel cost models are estimated these include restrictive cases of the nested logit model a partial demand model and two single site demand models comparisons across these models indicate the importance of modeling the participation decision including income effects and of adopting a nested logit structure rather than a single level logit structure

the surprising power of age dependent taxes this paper provides a new empirically driven application of the dynamic mirrleesian framework by studying a feasible and potentially powerful tax reform age dependent labour income taxation i show analytically how age dependence improves policy on both the intratemporal and intertemporal margins i use detailed numerical simulations calibrated with data from the u s panel study of income dynamics to generate robust policy implications age dependence 1 lowers marginal taxes on average and especially on high income young workers and 2 lowers average taxes on all young workers relative to older workers when private saving and borrowing are restricted finally i calculate and characterize the welfare gains from age dependence despite its simplicity age dependence generates a welfare gain equal to between 0 6 and 1 5 of aggregate annual consumption and it captures more than 60 of the gain from reform to the dynamic optimal policy the gains are due to substantial increases in both efficiency and equity when age dependence is restricted to be pareto improving the welfare gain is nearly as large

specification of spatial dynamic externalities and implications for strategic behavior in disease control we propose a novel distance and density dependent specification of externalities that captures spatial dynamics within and between neighboring land parcels we use this specification to model the short and long distance diffusion and control of an infectious disease in two privately owned and ecologically connected vineyards using computational experiments to generate individual and aggregate payoffs our results suggest that ignoring the within parcel spatial dynamics in the model may overestimate the social cost of an externality we find that increased resource value heterogeneity defined as the difference in grape prices received by the two vineyards has a detrimental impact on aggregate payoffs

optimal taxation in life cycle economies abstract we use a very standard life cycle growth model in which individuals have a labor leisure choice in each period of their lives to prove that an optimizing government will almost always find it optimal to tax or subsidize interest income the intuition for our result is straightforward in a life cycle model the individual s optimal consumption work plan is almost never constant and an optimizing government almost always taxes consumption goods and labor earnings at different rates over an individual s lifetime one way to achieve this goal is to use capital and labor income taxes that vary with age if tax rates cannot be conditioned on age a nonzero tax on capital income is also optimal as it can imperfectly mimic age conditioned consumption and labor income tax rates journal of economic literature classification numbers e62 h21

redistributive taxation in a simple perfect foresight model abstract we investigate the redistributive potential of capital taxation in an intertemporal maximizing model of capital formation first even unanticipated redistributive capital taxation is severely limited in its effectiveness since it depresses wages second under any convergent redistributive tax policy which maximizes a paretian social objective the capital income tax will converge to zero independent of the factor supply elasticities these results are independent of workers holdings of capital

natural resource federalism preferences versus connectivity for patchy resources we examine the efficiency of centralized versus decentralized management of spatially connected renewable resources when users have heterogeneous preferences for conservation versus extraction resource mobility induces a spatial externality while spatial preference heterogeneity drives a wedge between users privately optimal extraction rates we first address these market failures analytically and show that the first is most efficiently handled with centralized planning while the second is best tackled with decentralized management except in special cases neither approach will be first best but which arises as second best depends on the relative strength of preference heterogeneity versus spatial mobility of the resource we illustrate the theory and test its robustness with a numerical example

efficiency with endogenous population growth in this paper we generalize the notion of pareto e ciency to make it applicable to environments with endogenous populations two di erent e ciency concepts are proposed p e ciency and a e ciency the two concepts di er in how they treat people that are not born we show how these concepts relate to the notion of pareto e ciency when fertility is

coalition proof implementation abstract a new condition is shown to be necessary and sufficient for coalition proof nash equilibrium cpne implementation in environments with complete information this result implies that all choice functions are cpne implementable when individuals utility functions are bounded with respect to all variables except for money and are either analytic or quasi linear journal economic literature classification numbers c72 d72 d78

optimal harvesting of stochastic spatial resources abstract we characterize the optimal harvest of a renewable resource in a generalized stochastic spatially explicit model despite the complexity of the model we are able to obtain sharp analytical results we find that the optimal harvest rule in general depends upon dispersal patterns of the resource across space and only in special circumstances do we find a modified golden rule of growth that is independent of dispersal patterns we also find that the optimal harvest rule may include closure of some areas to harvest either on a temporary or permanent basis biological reserves reserves alone cannot correct open access but may under sufficient spatial heterogeneity and connectivity increase profits if appropriate harvest controls are in place outside of reserves

dynamic use of closures and imperfectly enforced quotas in a metapopulation the dynamic efficiency of closures in bioeconomic systems depends upon stock levels and in situ values that evolve over time and on relative costs of implementation a model of a harvested metapopulation is presented in which second best reduction of harvest from open access levels using input quotas balances monitoring costs against dynamic benefits of mitigating overharvesting temporary or permanent closures though generally still second best are preferable to quotas under certain conditions as demonstrated for a representative patch and time period interactions between patches are discussed numerical solutions illustrate comparative dynamics of closure use and show their potential benefits in a dynamic regulatory path

economic impacts of marine reserves the importance of spatial behavior abstract marine biologists have shown virtually unqualified support for managing fisheries with marine reserves signifying a new resource management paradigm that recognizes the importance of spatial processes in exploited systems most modeling of reserves employs simplifying assumptions about the behavior of fishermen in response to spatial closures we show that a realistic depiction of fishermen behavior dramatically alters the conclusions about reserves we develop estimate and calibrate an integrated bioeconomic model of the sea urchin fishery in northern california and use it to simulate reserve policies our behavioral model shows how economic incentives determine both participation and location choices of fishermen we compare simulations with behavioral response to biological modeling that presumes that effort is spatially uniform and unresponsive to economic incentives we demonstrate that optimistic conclusions about reserves may be an artifact of simplifying assumptions that ignore economic behavior

optimal indirect and capital taxation we consider an environment in which agents skills are private information and follow arbitrary stochastic processes we prove that it is typically pareto optimal for an individual s marginal benefit of investing in capital to exceed his marginal cost of doing so this wedge is consistent with a positive tax on capital income we also prove that it is pareto optimal for the marginal rate of substitution between any two consumption goods to equal the marginal rate of transformation this lack of a wedge is consistent with uniform taxation of consumption goods within a period

bioeconomics of spatial exploitation in a patchy environment abstract this paper presents a model of renewable resource exploitation that incorporates both intertemporal dynamics and spatial movement the model combines the h s gordon vernon smith hypothesis of a rent dissipation process with ricardian notions that resources are exploited across space in a pattern dependent upon relative profitabilities the population structure is characterized in a manner consistent with modern biological ideas that stress patchiness heterogeneity and interconnections among and between patches generally we find the equilibrium patterns of biomass and effort across the system to be dependent upon bioeconomic conditions within each patch and the nature of the biological dispersal mechanism between patches we use simple examples to illustrate how the distribution of effort throughout the system reflects the heterogeneity and the spatial biological linkages

conservation in the optimal use of rangelands abstract in previous papers we have considered the optimal mix of biodiversity in semi arid rangelands focusing on the steady state this paper addresses the question of conservation in the optimal use of rangelands where conservation is understood to mean maintenance of the system in a natural state we consider a rangeland that may exist in one of two states in the natural state its dynamics are regulated by fire in the managed state its dynamics are regulated by grazing pressure by livestock we show that the optimal use of rangelands may include its maintenance in both states at different points in time depending on initial conditions and the set of relative prices

implementation in undominated strategies a look at bounded mechanisms this paper examines the impact of placing natural restrictions on the mechanisms considered for implementation problems it is shown that if all mechanisms are considered and preferences satisfy a basic condition then any social choice correspondence can be implemented in undominated strategies an example points out that the strength of this result derives from the use of mechanisms with questionable features in part of the message space the agent who announces the highest integer is rewarded this sort of tail chasing construction common in the constructive proofs of the literature is used to assure that undesired strategy combinations do not form an equilibrium if such mechanisms are ruled out then the social choice correspondences which can be implemented in undominated strategies satisfy an incentive compatibility type condition called strategy resistence for social choice functions this is equivalent to strategy proofness this contrast suggests that this issue should be examined as it applies to other solution concepts used in implementation theory the last portion of the paper begins to explore the issue as it relates to nash implementation and undominated nash implementation

taxation and saving a retrospective atkinson and sandmo 1980 evaluated the taxation of saving by embedding the static optimal tax framework within the two period overlapping generations model using this model they collected a series of important results for optimal taxes on labour and capital income under a variety of assumptions regarding the instruments and objectives of the government in particular the availability of national debt to spread burdens among different generations of individuals with clear intuition and presentation the study remains an important source for understanding the welfare implications of the taxation of saving

a metapopulation model with private property and a common pool abstract a metapopulation illustrated by barnacles has a spatial distribution and a two stage life cycle in the model developed here space limits expansion introducing a profitable harvest activity of adults leads to harvest at only one site a solution driven by biological increasing returns the model is of interdisciplinary interest because the natural resource has common property characteristics in its larval stage but a private property character in its adult stage the model permits economic valuation of lost habitat

optimal taxation of capital income in general equilibrium with infinite lives this paper analyzes the optimal tax on capital income in general equilibrium models of the second best agents have infinite lives and utility functions which are extensions from the koopmans form the population is heterogeneous the important property of the models is the equality between the social and the private discount rates in the long run i find that the optimal tax rate is zero in the long run for a special case of additively separable utility functions i then determine the tax rates along the dynamic path and conditions that are sufficient for the local stability of the steady state

landing fees vs harvest quotas with uncertain fish stocks a revised version of this paper was published in the journal of environmental economics and management volume 43 issue 2 march 2002 pages 325 338

sharing clams tragedy of an incomplete commons abstract a dispersive phase is part of the reproductive cycle of most living organisms when economic agents are limited to harvesting a renewable resource from a fixed geographical area dispersion of the resource creates a tragedy of the commons a dynamic optimization problem is constructed where economic agents control fixed areas the growth of the resource occurring in each area disperses it is shown that the desired stock size for maximizing agents in their own area decreases inversely with the amount of leakage the degree to which the resource is common the socially optimal stock in each region is a function of the marginal profit for all areas that receive dispersing organisms and may be greater than the privately optimal stock for an area if that area captured all of its own resource growth this effect is enhanced if the dispersal rate is stock dependent possibly creating a double tragedy in a source and sink situation the socially optimal solution may involve eliminating all harvesting in the source region

coalition proof nash equilibria ii applications abstract in bernheim peleg and whinston coalition proof equilibria i concepts j econ theory 42 1987 1 12 we proposed the notion of coalition proof nash equilibrium and perfectly coalition proof nash equilibrium as solution concepts for strategic environments in which players can freely discuss their strategies but cannot make binding commitments this paper undertakes applications to several economic problems including the behavior of cournot oligopolists oligopolistic entry deterrence cooperation in finite horizon games and social choice rule implementation