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 predit les conditions futures de l environnement les variations dans les conditions de l environnement affectent la croissance de la ressource renouvelable la capacitea prevoir ces variations s ameliore et ouvre la possibilite d ameliorer la gestion de la ressource les auteurs utilisent un modele de ressource renouvelable avec croissance stochastique et obtiennent trois resultats d abord alors qu il peut sembler que des previsions pessimistes de conditions difficiles dans l avenir peuvent conduire a une gestion plus conservatrice le contraire peut etre vrai ensuite la gestion optimale requiert seulement une prediction pour la prochaine periode voila qui suggere qu il est plus important d avoir une prevision exacte que d avoir des previsions a plus long terme enfin on developpe les conditions pour les fluctuations de l environnement qui garantissent une recolte positive optimale a chaque periode

optimal harvesting of an age structured schooling fishery biologists have criticized traditional biomass models in fishery economics for being oversimplified biological stock assessment models are more sophisticated with regard to biological content but rarely account for economic objectives this study includes a full age structured population model for studying schooling fisheries and extends the delayed difference approach used in earlier studies we take the total harvest as the choice variable resulting in a simple analytical structure the model produces optimal steady states that may be higher or lower compared to the delayed difference formulation the model is applied to the baltic sprat fishery both ecological and harvesting cost data support specifying baltic sprat as a schooling fishery given nonlinear harvesting costs the optimal solution is a path toward a steady state with smooth annual harvest and population age structure sensitivity analysis shows that the optimal solution is highly dependent on the population level of the sprat s main predator baltic cod a linear cost function and an interest rate below 9 imply pulse fishing instead of smooth continuous harvesting given nonlinear harvesting cost the optimal steady state yield is rather insensitive to changes in the interest rate however under a high cod scenario interest rates of 10 or higher implies that no optimal steady state exists

legislator turnout and the calculus of voting the determinants of abstention in the u s congress the belief that turnout and abstention depend on theinteraction of the benefits and costs of voting is oneof the longest held in public choice the interplaybetween benefits and costs has typically been studiedwithin the context of voter turnout in elections butthese results are confounded by the fact thatparticipation in such elections is a low cost low benefit activity analysis of voting in legislatures where the potential returns and costs to participantsare greater is more promising

renewable resource management with stochastic recharge and environmental threats abstract exploitation diminishes the capacity of renewable resources to withstand environmental stress increasing their vulnerability to extreme conditions that may trigger abrupt changes the onset of such events depends on the coincidence of extreme environmental conditions and on the resource state determining its resilience when the former is uncertain and the latter evolves stochastically the uncertainty regarding the event occurrence is the result of the combined effect of these two uncertain components we study optimal management in this setting the environmental threat renders the single period discount factor policy dependent and as a result the compound discount factor becomes history dependent existence of an optimal markovian deterministic stationary policy is established and the optimal state process is shown to converge to a steady state distribution

rational choice and turnout turning out to vote is the most common and important act of political participation in any democracy voting is also less well understood and explained empirically than other political acts engaged in regularly by citizens turnout however presents a special problem for rational choice theories of politics for it is taken to be the paradigmatic example of the problem of collective action in which although all may benefit from voting it is rarely in the individual s self interest to vote this paper begins by examining the problem of explaining turnout a basic form of rational choice models of turnout is developed basic in the sense that it is common to all such models this basic model is shown to be incomplete and the two most important models the calculus of voting and the minimax regret model are illustrated as alternative ways to complete this basic model along with mention of game theoretic models their strengths and weaknesses are then assessed the remainder of the paper argues that rational choice accounts of turnout are possible the first step is to argue that turnout is not an especially problematic version of the collective action problem because it is for many a low cost low expected benefit decision a strategic politicians account of turnout and campaigns is examined next a reinterpretation of the intrinsic benefits of voting is then considered and is used to examine the most important substantive problem in the turnout literature its decline these steps i argue make theories of ordinary political decisions at once both more political and more integrated into the politics of the larger system

renewable resource harvesting under correlated biological and economic uncertainties implications for optimal and second best management biologists have long recognized environmental disturbances impact both the growth of renewable resources and the efficiency of harvest effort however models of renewable resource management under uncertainty have commonly assumed economic and biological uncertainties to be uncorrelated we present examples of valuable fish species that experience correlated variation in biological growth and catchability in response to a common environmental disturbance building correlation into a model of renewable resource management under uncertainty we find correlation to alter the optimal response by managers to cost disturbances and impact the value of retaining intra period flexibility over harvest targets examining the performance of three harvest control mechanisms harvest quotas effort quotas and taxes reveals that positive correlation between costs and growth favors harvest quotas over effort quotas and effort quotas over taxes and vice versa the model is then applied numerically to the pacific bigeye tuna fishery which experiences positively correlated shocks driven by the el nino southern oscillation correlation qualitatively changes the optimal response to a cost shock and harvest quotas are found to be strongly favored over both effort quotas and taxes

nonlinear integration of london and amsterdam stock markets in the 1700s the financial markets in london and amsterdam were some of the first to develop using threshold autoregressive models we use data on two commonly traded stocks in these cities to show that the joint behaviour of the prices is consistent with the theory of arbitrage in the presence of transportation costs the results suggest that prices converged more quickly as the price difference between the two markets increased we also show that the threshold estimates are consistent between assets and across time these results provide some of the earliest evidence of nonlinear mean reversion in asset prices in geographically separate financial markets

does the optimal size of a fish stock increase with environmental uncertainties we analyze the effect of environmental uncertainties on optimal fishery management in a bio economic fishery model unlike most of the literature on resource economics but in line with ecological models we allow the different biological processes of survival and recruitment to be affected differently by environmental uncertainties we show that the overall effect of uncertainty on the optimal size of a fish stock is ambiguous depending on the prudence of the value function for the case of a risk neutral fishery manager the overall effect depends on the relative magnitude of two opposing effects the convex cost effect and the gambling effect we apply the analysis to the baltic cod and the north sea herring fisheries concluding that for risk neutral agents the net effect of environmental uncertainties on the optimal size of these fish stocks is negative albeit small in absolute value under risk aversion the effect on optimal stock size is positive for sufficiently high coefficients of constant relative risk aversion

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

optimal management with reversible regime shifts abstract in this paper we examine the management of a natural resource a fishery subject to regime shifting dynamics a regime shift is defined as an episode in which the dynamics of the resource can switch between two alternative regimes at random times specifically we study the impact of reversible regime switching both observed and unobserved on optimal harvesting policy the case in which the regime is not directly observed i e observational uncertainty is addressed by using the extended pomdp approach developed in fackler and pacifici 2014 we illustrate the performance of the model under different assumptions on the underlying stochastic growth variability the biological structure of the stock in different regimes and the resilience of the regimes when the regime is known optimal policies depend on the population level and which regime is currently active when the regime is unobserved on the other hand the optimal policy depends on the population level and a belief distribution about the current regime in general when the probability of regime change is fixed and hence is not affected by harvesting policy the optimal policy is of the constant escapement variety when the probability of switching regime is endogenous the optimal policy is no longer of the constant escapement type optimal policies when the regime is uncertain are approximately equal to a weighted average of the policies when the regime is certain with the weights equal to the beliefs in the associated regimes but there are differences

consumption pollution tradeoffs in an environment vulnerable to pollution related catastrophic collapse abstract this paper considers the consequences of an avoidable risk of irreversible environmental catastrophe for society s optimal long run consumption pollution tradeoffs the risk is assumed to be a nondecreasing function of pollution concentration which evolves as a dynamic environmental renewal process the main objective of the paper is to derive qualitative insights regarding the effects of such risk on optimal management

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 gestion d une ressource renouvelable quand il y prevision environnementale importance des specifications structurelles la variabilite de l environnement peut affecter de maniere significative la croissance d une ressource renouvelable et a proportion que l habilete a prevoir les conditions environnementales des occasions de gestion qui s y adaptent emergent utilisant un modele stochastique du type stock recrutement costello et al 2001 montrent que la gestion optimale face a une prediction de conditions de croissance favourables serait de reduire les recoltes presentes on montre que ce resultat peut etre inverse quand la variabilite de l environnement et les stocks sont des substituts dans la croissance une possibilite que les economistes specialises en ressources ont ignore on examine en tant qu exemple les peches de crevettes blanches de la caroline du sud et on montre que la reponse optimale a une prevision de conditions favourables au cours de l hiver qui vient est d accroitre les recoltes d automne

on uncertain renewable resource stocks optimal harvest policies and the value of stock surveys abstract annual harvest quotas are commonly employed in the management of renewable resource stocks commercial fisheries being a prime example such resource stocks often undergo quite significant natural fluctuations to which quotas must be adapted a further complication arises from the fact that estimates of stock abundance are often highly uncertain in this paper a bayesian approach is used to model optimal quota decisions for an uncertain fluctuating renewable resource stock

fisheries management under cyclical population dynamics cycles in environmental conditions e g sea surface temperature directly impact fish growth this paper extends the classical gordon schaefer fishery model by replacing the constant growth rate with a cyclical growth rate the optimal harvest rate is shown to fluctuate but the cycle of the harvest rate lags the cycle of the biological growth function with the highest harvest rate occurring after biological conditions start to decline simulations contrast various fishing policies and illustrate the proclivity to crash a fishery if it is wrongfully managed as if there is a constant growth rate with i i d environmental shocks finally we show that small cyclical fluctuations in one species can result in large fluctuations in the optimal harvest rate of another species if the fish species are interlinked through predator prey relationships

fishery management under multiple uncertainty abstract among others who point to environmental variability and managerial uncertainty as causes of fishery collapse roughgarden and smith proc natl acad sci 93 1996 5078 argue that three sources of uncertainty are important for fisheries management variability in fish dynamics inaccurate stock size estimates and inaccurate implementation of harvest quotas we develop a bioeconomic model with these three sources of uncertainty and solve for optimal escapement based on measurements of fish stock in a discrete time model among other results we find 1 when uncertainties are high we generally reject the constant escapement rule advocated in much of the existing literature 2 inaccurate stock estimation affects policy in a fundamentally different way than the other sources of uncertainty and 3 the optimal policy leads to significantly higher commercial profits and lower extinction risk than the optimal constant escapement policy by 42 and 56 respectively

fisheries management with stock growth uncertainty and costly capital adjustment we develop a dynamic model of a fishery which simultaneously incorporates random stock growth and costly capital adjustment numerical techniques are used to solve for the resource rent maximizing harvest and capital investment policies capital rigidities bring diminishing marginal returns to the current period harvest and introduce an incentive to smooth the catch over time with density dependent stock growth however catch smoothing increases stock variability resulting in reduced average yields the optimal management policy balances the catch smoothing benefits against yield loss we calibrate the model to the alaskan pacific halibut fishery to demonstrate the main insights

voter participation and strategic uncertainty the paradox of not voting is examined in a model where voters have uncertainty about the preferences and costs of other voters in game theoretic models of voter participation under complete information equilibrium outcomes can have substantial turnout even when voting costs are relatively high in contrast when uncertainty about preferences and costs is present only voters with negligible or negative net voting costs participate when the electorate is large

efficiency equity and timing of voting mechanisms we compare the behavior of voters under simultaneous and sequential voting rules when voting is costly and information is incomplete in many political institutions ranging from small committees to mass elections voting is sequential which allows some voters to know the choices of earlier voters for a stylized model we generate a variety of predictions about the relative efficiency and participation equity of these two systems which we test using controlled laboratory experiments most of the qualitative predictions are supported by the data but there are significant departures from the predicted equilibrium strategies in both the sequential and the simultaneous voting games we find a tradeoff between information aggregation efficiency and equity in sequential voting a sequential voting rule aggregates information better than simultaneous voting and is more efficient in some information environments but sequential voting is inequitable because early voters bear more participation costs

abstention in daylight strategic calculus of voting in the european parliament as in large elections substantialabstention is frequently observed inlegislative assemblies this paper analyzesroll call votes from the third and fourthlegislatures 1989 1999 of the europeanparliament to test predictions from threetypes of theories of abstention 1 decision theoretic approach of rationalchoice theory 2 game theoretic approachof rational choice theory and 3 theswing voter s curse theory the resultsindicate that closeness significantlydecreases the rate of abstention thefindings also show that an increase in theprobability of being in the majorityincreases turnout overall findings aresupportive of the decision theoreticapproach of rational choice theory butnot of the game theoretic approach toabstention or the swing voter s cursetheory

legislator voting and shirking a critical review of the literature we set out to critically review the progress in answering two related questions what determines how legislators vote and how can shirking by legislators be measured in the first category the hypothesis that legislators shirk in order to indulge their personal ideological preferences has led researchers astray the theoretical underpinning is shaky on two counts first legislators who indulge their preferences at the expense of their constituents preferences put themselves at a competitive electoral disadvantage second the original two stage procedure used to measure ideological shirking is severely flawed among many other problems the residual measure of shirking implicitly assumes that the median voter is the relevant constituent principal for the legislator agent

production technology costs and multiproduct industry structure an application of the long run profit function to the new england fishing industry the long run multiproduct profit function is developed to provide a more general procedure than the static minimum cost function to examine the technological and cost determinants of multiproduct industry structure and the likely form of any market equilibrium in this approach outputs are endogenous and the long run equilibrium levels of quasi fixed factors are endogenously determined the multiproduct structure of the multispecies new england fishing industry and the likely multi

financial market integration in the early modern period in spain results from a threshold error correction model abstract the application of a threshold error correction model to the exchange rates of the spanish ducado and the dutch groat in seville and medina del campo in the 16th century indicates that the band of arbitrage inactivity was 6

groups in rational turnout models a model of the strategic calculus of voting that incorporates the behavior of groups is presented if candidates choose different positions positive turnout is possible in partial equilibrium and is generally larger than that without group rationality nevertheless if candidates are probability maximizers and a unique general equilibrium exists the candidates will choose equivalent positions and turnout will be zero even with group rationality but if candidates care about both policy and winning they will choose different positions and cause positive turnout this turnout will be larger than that that would occur without group rationality group rationality alone cannot explain positive turnout in a general equilibrium theory of elections it does imply larger turnout in conjunction with policy oriented candidates than would be predicted solely by individualistic rational behavior

landing fees versus fish quotas the relative efficiency of landing fees versus quota controls to achieve given escapement levels is examined the criterion is profit per year over a given time horizon the model employed is a discrete version of the logistic model where growth is influenced by a random variable simulations are used to compare landing fees and quota controls under imprecise stock estimates variable availability of fish and random fish prices while ecological uncertainty combined with imprecise stock estimates favors fee control as shown byweitzman the opposite can be the case under uncertainty about the availability of fish or fish price

spatial renewable resource extraction under possible regime shift how will countries harvesting mobile natural resources react to the possibility of regime shift we address the non cooperative exploitation of a migratory renewable resource in the presence of possible regime shift that affects its movement motivated by the anticipated effects of climate change we model a regime shift that will alter the spatial movement patterns of the resource at some point in the future we develop a stochastic spatial bioeconomic model to address the effects of this class of regime shift on non cooperative harvest decisions made by decentralized owners such as countries exploiting a migratory fish or other natural resource stock we find that the threat of a future shift modies the standard golden rule and may induce more aggressive harvest everywhere irrespective of whether the owner will be advantaged or disadvantaged by the shift we also identify conditions under which the threat of regime shift induces owners to reduce harvest rates in advance of the shift our analysis suggests that different property rights structures single ownership vs common property or heterogeneous growth can give rise to previously unexplored incentives and can even reverse conventional wisdom about how countries will react to the prospect of future environmental change

optimal fishery management with regime shifts an assessment of harvesting strategies this paper compares outcomes from informed and uninformed harvesting strategies for a fish stock with switching dynamics where the probability of switching is influenced by climate using data on sea surface temperature anomalies the impacts of climate on the conservation and the welfare that can be extracted from the stock are investigated results indicate that an informed management policy leads to stock biomass and resource rents that are up to 2 7 and 2 times higher respectively than under an uninformed policy also the fishery is open 54 longer under the informed policy the magnitude of these effects depends on the choice of the discount rate indicating that when the future is highly discounted gains from the informed policy dissipate