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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Open-Access Renewable Resources: Trade And Trade Policy In A Two-Country Model, M. Scott Taylor, James A. Brander
Open-Access Renewable Resources: Trade And Trade Policy In A Two-Country Model, M. Scott Taylor, James A. Brander
M. Scott Taylor
We develop a theory of resource management where the degree to which countries escape the tragedy of the commons is endogenously determined and explicitly linked to changes in world prices and other possible effects of market integration. We show how changes in world prices can move some countries from de facto open access situations to ones where management replicates that of an unconstrained social planner. Not all countries can follow this path of institutional reform and we identify key country characteristics (mortality rates, resource growth rates, technology) that divide world's set of resource rich countries into three categories. Category I …
The Simple Economics Of Easter Island: A Ricardo-Malthus Model Of Renewable Resource Use, M. Scott Taylor, James A. Brander
The Simple Economics Of Easter Island: A Ricardo-Malthus Model Of Renewable Resource Use, M. Scott Taylor, James A. Brander
M. Scott Taylor
We present a simple general equilibrium model of renewable resource and population dynamics that may explain the rise and fall of Easter Island's civilization. The model generates a system similar to the Lotka-Volterra predator-prey model. In our formulation man is the predator and the resource base is the prey, leading to the possibility of feast and famine cycles of rising and falling population and resource stocks. Such cycles tend to arise when fertility is high and the resource base grows slowly. We speculate that such cycles may often cause violent conflict and describe other civilizations that may have declined because …