On the dynamics of renewable resource harvesting and pollution control

The paper presents a dynamic partial equilibrium model which combines optimal renewable resource harvesting and optimal pollution control. Pollution accumulates as a slowly decaying stock and is assumed to affect the growth and the quality of the renewable resource stock. The aim is to maximize a social welfare functional which gives the present value of the difference between natural resource benefits and pollution control costs. The existence, uniqueness and the dynamic properties of the steady states are investigated. The analysis also gives a general result concerning the steady state of any two state variable optimal control problems. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1991