Sustainability and Resources

The book, Sustainability and Resources: Theoretical Issues in Dynamic Economics, presents a collection of mathematical models dealing with sustainability and resource management.

The focus in Part A is on harvesting renewable resources, while Part B explores the optimal extraction of exhaustible resources. Part C introduces models dealing with uncertainty. Some are descriptive models; others have deep roots in intertemporal welfare economics. The tools of dynamic optimization developed in the 1960s are used in a formal, rigorous presentation to address wide-ranging issues that have appeared in academic research as well as policy debates on the world stage.

The book also provides a self-contained treatment that is accessible to advanced undergraduate and graduate students, who are interested in dynamic models of resource allocation and social welfare, resource management, and applications of optimization theory and methods of probability theory to economics. For researchers in dynamic economics, it will be an invaluable source for formal treatment of substantive macroeconomic issues raised by policymakers. The part dealing with uncertainty and random dynamical systems (largely developed by the author and his collaborators) exposes the reader to contemporary frontiers of research on stochastic processes with novel applications to economic problems.
Contents: IntroductionEvolution, Extinction and SustainabilityOptimal Harvesting: Finite HorizonRolling Plans: Efficiency and Long-Run OptimalityInfinite Horizon Models: Discounting and SustainabilityProfit Maximization and ExtinctionUtilization of an Exhaustible Resource: A Partial Equilibrium ApproachProduction with an Exhaustible Resource: Efficiency and Intergenerational EquityA Cobb–Douglas EconomyTechnological Transition: An Optimistic ApproachEvolution and Extinction under UncertaintySustainable Consumption and UncertaintyMathematical Preliminaries
Readership: Students and professionals interested in sustainability and resources and dynamic economics.Sustainability;Renewable Resources;Intergenerational Equity;Dynamic Efficiency;Extinction;Complexity;Planning Revision;Long Run Optimality;Non-Convexity;Critical Conservation Stock;Ramsey-Euler Condition;Exhaustible Resources;Optimal Extraction;Technological Choice;Wealth Fund;Water Management;Uncertainty0Key Features:This book offers a collection of dynamic models dealing with issues related to sustainability and resource management. The exposition is rigorous but accessible to advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as beginning researchersThis book is unique in its choice of topics and the discrete time framework to deal with evolution over time. No other text or monograph provides a parallel treatment of topics like identifying sustainable consumption patterns; tipping points that mark possible, probable or inevitable extinction; non-convexity and the use of random dynamical systems to capture uncertaintyThis book aims to introduce students and researchers to important themes that are scattered in journal articles. The reader with a minimal amount of training in mathematical analysis and probability is helped by examples and exercises to acquire analytical techniques to attack important policy issues in dynamic macroeconomics and resource management