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AbstractRenewable resources play an important role in our economy directly as outputs, such as fish and timber, and indirectly as inputs, such as water and soil. This article introduces three key issues in renewable resource economics and the techniques that economists use to address them. Using examples from fisheries, I outline the theory of sustainable resource use, the problems associated with common property and interjurisdictional sharing. I complete the article with a discussion of two current challenges facing fisheries: the estimated $25–29 billion paid globally in subsidies each year and international sharing that has an adverse effect on stock status.

In the first paper, we show that a lower importance of catch in recreational fishing may result in higher catches. While this effect also holds under first-best management, it may destabilize open-access recreational fisheries to the point of stock collapse. The second paper analyzes the political economy of resource management. We show that resource users (the processing industry, consumers) and factor owners (capital and labor employed in resource harvesting) may favor inefficiently high harvest rates up to open-access levels. This may explain why public resource management is often very inefficient. The third paper models trade in renewable resources as stipulated not only by autarky price differences, but also by consumers' love of variety. We show that the love-of-variety effect enables welfare gains from trade even if total consumption decreases. Total consumption may decrease because the love of variety weakens the link between resource scarcity and demand.

The economic literature on conflict employs a static, game-theoretic framework developed by Jack Hirshleifer. The authors introduce conflict dynamics into a model with two rival groups, each dependent on a single contested renewable resource. The model is based on two stylized facts: conflict often arises over scarce renewable resources, and those resources often lack well-defined and/or enforceable property rights. In each period, groups allocate their members between resource harvesting and resource appropriation (or conflict) to maximize their income. This leads to a complex nonlinear dynamic interaction between conflict, the two populations, and the resource. As developed, the model relates most closely to conflict over renewable resources in primitive societies. The system's global dynamics are investigated in simulations calibrated for the historical society of Easter Island. The model's implications for contemporary lesser developed societies are examined.

Real life implies that public procurement contracting of renewable resources results in repeated interaction between a principal and the agents. The present paper analyses ratchet effects in contracting of renewable resources and how the presence of a resource constraint alters the "standard" ratchet effect result. We use a linear reward scheme to influence the incentives of the agents. It is shown that for some renewable resources we might end up both with more or with less pooling in the first-period compared to a situation without a resource constraint. The reason is that the resource constraint implies a smaller performance de-pendent bonus, which reduces the first-period cost from concealing information but at the same time the resource constraint may also imply that second-period benefits from this concealment for the efficient agent are reduced. In situations with high likelihood of first-period pooling, the appropriateness of applying lin-ear incentive schemes can be questioned.

We examined trends in legal responsibilities, budgets and staffing, primarily for the BC government's renewable resource ministries (forests, fish, wildlife, and parks). Legal responsibilities (complexity) of forest management expanded substantially from 1912 to 2011, almost tripling in the last 25 years. Government expenditures on renewable resources increased steadily from 1975 to 1997, but decreased by approximately half since then. However, the budgets for the remaining "non-resource" sectors of government more than doubled since 1997. The number of professional foresters employed in both government and industry has declined in recent years, more so in industry. Although the total number of professional biologists in the province has increased steadily since 1980, the Ministry of Environment has lost nearly 30 percent of its biologists since 2002. These decreases in funding and staffing jeopardize key management functions, and put the province's renewable natural resources at increasing risk