A key challenge in managing semi-arid Basins, such as in the Murray-Darling in Australia, is to balance the trade-offs between the net benefits of allocating water for irrigated agriculture, and other uses, versus the costs of reduced surface flows for the environment. Typically, water planners...

A stochastic bio-economic model is constructed to analyse the effects of marine reserve ‘switching’ between a ‘no take’ area and a harvested area. The model accounts for both market and non-market values of the fishery. Estimated parameters from the red throat emperor fishery from the...

The northern cod fishery was once one of the world’s largest capture fisheries. Using data from the fishery, this research calculated the economic value of a marine reserve using a stochastic optimal control model with a jump-diffusion process. The analysis shows that, an optimal-sized marine...

The results of this analysis show that a long-term tree crop plantation is effective at reducing carbon emissions from a predominantly grazing farming system. However, if the plantations are destumped, much of the carbon will be returned to the atmosphere in time, in which case benefits are...

The paper provides the first ex-post estimates of the effects on technical efficiency of input controls in a fishery. Using individual vessel data from the northern prawn fishery of Australia for the years 1990–1996 and 1994–2000, a stochastic production frontier is estimated to analyse the...

The paper presents the first ex-post analysis of profit and productivity of individual vessels following a vessel or licence buyback in a fishery. Using individual firm-level data for the period 1997-2000, the paper analyzes a “natural experiment" of the effects of a 1997 scheme to reduce...

Unpredictable environmental fluctuations are a major problem in fisheries. To mitigate these uncertainties, reserves are advocated to help ensure population persistence, reduce population and harvest variance and to provide a ‘hedge’ against management failures. Using recent insights from...

This paper is a study of the production technology and relative efficiency of vessels harvesting banana and tiger prawns in the Northern Prawn Fishery (NPF), one of Australia’s largest and most lucrative fishing areas. It is based on an unbalanaced panel data set of 226 observations among...

In this paper efficiency gains and associated cost reductions from increases in traded quota are estimated with a stochastic cost frontier for the Australian South East Trawl Fishery (SETF). Estimation of this frontier also provides key information on the relative importance of input costs in...

Ecological economics is a relatively new interdisciplinary field concerned with the relationship between economic systems and the biological and physical world. This article covers the following topics: A discussion of views on whether ecological economics is just a field or approach within...