Among others who point to environmental variability and managerial uncertainty as causes of fishery collapse, Roughgarden and Smith (1996) argue that three sources of uncertainty are important for fisheries management: variability in fish dynamics, inaccurate stock size estimates, and inaccurate...

We study the influence of prices and non-price conservation programs on water consumption and conservation behavior during a drought in the San Francisco Bay Area. The empirical results show that pricing can be effective in reducing water consumption. Use restrictions and landscaping audits are...

We link farmland values to climatic, soil, and socioeconomic variables for counties east of the 100th meridian, the historic boundary of agriculture not primarily dependent on irrigation. Degree days, a non-linear transformation of the climatic variables suggested by agronomic experiments as...

This paper develops a model of residential water demand under a nonlinear budget constraint. The theoretical model for an individual consumer is adapted to yield an aggregate model that preserves the structure of the individual demand function, and that can be used with aggregate (water district...

We define the irreversibility effect and demonstrate its importance in problems involving investment decisions under uncertainty. We establish several analytical and numerical results that suggest both that the effect holds more widely than generally recognized, and that an existing result...

This paper sets up a model using stochastic dynamic programming to analyze pollution control decisions. Environmental decision making is characterized by both uncertainty and irreversibility: Uncertainty might be related to future costs and benefits of adopting a particular control policy....

The research questions and topics most likely to emerge in the near term future are assessed. A common theme is that policy issues will be an important driving force, as has generally been true in the past. More specifically, future theoretical advances are expected to occur in the treatment of...

A survey of the literature on the economics of natural resources. Extractive resources are classified as renewable or non-renewable, depending on whether they exhibit economically significant rates of regeneration. A unified model of optimal extraction over time is developed, drawing on a number...