New directions in renewable resource management: Essays on the bioeconomics of ecological interactions, multiple agencies, public choice, and multiple harvesting ground

A standard but unrealistic assumption in bioeconomic models is that regulatory agencies acting in the public interest will manage a single species from a single harvesting ground to maximize the present value of economic net benefits. Agencies more likely have many considerations when designing policy due to complex ecological relationships between the environment and the resource, political influences, multiple agencies, or other economic factors.;This dissertation expands upon basic bioeconomic theory to study the implications of three complex but important situations for renewable resource management: (1) cooperative and non-cooperative management of pollution and renewable resources, (2) competing interest groups, and (3) management of multiple harvesting grounds when price is endogenous and nonmarket values are involved.;A conceptual model is developed to consider cooperative and non-cooperative management of pollution and renewable resources. The resource management regime is crucial to the pollution costs. In addition, increased ambient levels may increase welfare levels under cooperative management relative to traditional analyses that do not model pollution and resource interactions. Finally, non-cooperative management by separate agencies results in inefficient outcomes.;The second topic is resource management when regulators exhibit preferences over interest groups. Public choice theories suggest that traditional bioeconomic analyses of efficient resource management are unrealistic. A political preference model of resource management shows that the relationship between politically and economically optimum steady state values is ambiguous, varying according to the relative weight of different interest groups, the policy instruments available to the managing agency, variations in time preferences, technology, and demand and input markets.;Finally, the efficient management of multiple harvesting grounds with an endogenous price is considered and applied to Minke whale management. The results differ significantly from those of previous research that held price fixed. In addition, interregional substitution effects are shown to be an important. The International Whaling Commission (IWC) imposed a moratorium on all whaling activities in 1985/86 and has postponed reinstating quotas in part due to uncertainty about growth parameters and abundance estimates. However, neither uncertainty nor economic reasons justify the moratorium. Including nonmarket values such as humane values to the model makes an efficient moratorium more likely.