We analyze how the threat of a potential future regime shift affects optimal management. We use a simple general growth model to analyze four cases that involve combinations of stock collapse versus changes in system dynamics, and exogenous versus endogenous probabilities of regime shift. Prior...

This paper analyzes overlapping-generations models where natural capital is owned by selfish agents. Transfers in favor of young agents reduce the rate of depletion and increase output growth. It is shown that intergenerational transfers may be preferred to laissez-faire by an indefinite...

Commodity price increases associated with the entry of China, India and other countries into the world economy has led to increased pressure on common-property renewable natural resources (NR). The problem is particularly worrisome for economies that obtain a large share of their income from the...

For most computationally intractable problems there exists no heuristic that is equally effective on all instances. Rather, any given heuristic may do well on some instances but will do worse on others. Indeed, even the 'best' heuristics will be dominated by others on at least some subclasses of...

Optimal management of biodiversity at the national level, even if achievable, is not necessarily consistent with a global optimum. While the existence of trading relationships allows for the possibility of the use of trade interventions as a means of imposing unilateral solutions, the presence...

As time passes, renewable resource scarcities are becoming more common throughout the world. There is increasing evidence that these scarcities are a causal factor in civil unrest and violent conflict, especially in developing countries. We present a simple model of renewable resource dynamics,...

This paper examines a simple North-South growth model where negative externalities may contribute to reinforce economic growth. Agents' welfare depends on three goods in the model: leisure, a common access renewable natural resource (one in each hemisphere) and a non-storable consumption good....

We analyze the impacts of future scenarios of electric vehicles (EVs) on the German power system, drawing on different assumptions on the charging mode. We find that the impact on the load duration curve strongly differs between charging modes. In a fully user-driven mode, charging largely...

We analyze optimal harvesting policy under stochastic price and stock dynamics. We state a set of weak conditions under which the optimal policy can be characterized by a single exercise threshold and show that the value of optimal harvesting and depletion policies can be expressed as the...

This paper studies the properties of second-best optimal policy in a standard general equilibrium model of growth augmented with renewable natural resources. The government chooses its policy instruments (the income tax rate and the allocation of collected tax revenues between public investment...