Conventional wisdom appears to implicate climate change as the root cause of the unprecedented mountain pine beetle (MPB) outbreak currently underway in the western United States. While climate change is undoubtedly a factor, historic changes in public forest management have resulted in greater...

We develop a computationally efficient methodology to evaluate optimal management in a spatially and temporally dynamic bioeconomic system. The method involves standard techniques from the macroeconomics literature to calculate approximately optimal linear decision rules. Iterations between the...

The spatial scale of an environmental problem is dictated by boundaries. Physical boundaries limit the extent of impacts while the scale of decision making creates perceived boundaries beyond which impacts are ignored by decision makers. While it is well understood that uncertainty and...

Climate change is believed to be the root cause of the unprecedented mountain pine beetle (MPB) outbreak currently underway in the western United States. While climate change is undoubtedly a factor, changes in public forest management have resulted in more host trees in MPB habitat. We employ a...

Predictions of damages and damages that might be avoided from invasive species control policies are marred by uncertainty that has both economic and ecological roots. Public policies directed at invasive species typically lag their detection. One possible explanation is the coupling of...

Invasive species policy is an economic issue. People affect the spread of invasive species, and these invaders affect people. This review discusses bioeconomic modeling using endogenous risk theory to capture the idea of jointly determined ecological and economic systems. This perspective adds...

In this paper, we develop a bioeconomic model of timber harvesting that includes dynamic interactions between mountain pine beetle (MPB) and a lodgepole pine forest with a disaggregated size structure. The model is used to investigate the consequences of alternative public management strategies...

Conventional wisdom appears to implicate climate change as the root cause of the unprecedented mountain pine beetle (MPB) outbreak currently underway in the western United States. While climate change is undoubtedly a factor, historic changes in public forest management have resulted in greater...