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The Rule Of Capture And The Economic Dynamics Of Natural Resource Use And Survival Under Open Access Management Regimes, Jason S. Johnston

All Faculty Scholarship

By reviewing the bioeconomic dynamics of natural resource harvest under open access/rule of capture management, this article demonstrates the falsity of the widely held contemporary view that market incentives lead to unsustainable natural resource use. The formal bioeconomic models teach that it is the relative speed of market versus natural dynamics that determines when and if open access harvest leads to resource collapse. If the rate at which harvesters exit from the harvest industry when harvests are low is rapid relative to the natural rate of growth in the harvested stock, the level of both the resource stock and harvest …