The economics of harvesting predator prey systems英文文献.pdfVIP

voi 61 (1995), No. 1, pp. 65-8 1 Journat of Economics Zeitschrift fur Nationalokonomie © Springer-Verlag 1995 - Printed in Austria The Economics of Harvesting Predator-Prey Systems Wolfgang J. Strobele atid Holger Wacker Received February 22, 1994; revised version received December 7, 1994 The economics of harvesting a renewable natural resource is well-developed in a framework where environmental conditions of the species looked at are kept constant. For the case of two interacting species as a prey-predator relationship the economics of harvesting one of the two species is analyzed. Questions of existence, uniqueness, and stability are looked at. Applying optimal control theory, a modified golden rule of harvesting is derived. 1 Introduction With a worldwide rising demand for protein the pressure on fisheries increases also . Obviously this led to a breakdown of several fish stocks, e.g., the North Sea herring, the Peruvian anchoves, and the Gulf of Thailand fisheries. It is not always clear whether such declines are breakdowns or de- velopments to steady-states with lower stocks . An investigation of the Atlantic herring and the Pacific sardines arrives at the conclusion that these stocks are subject to regular and catastrophe-like fluctuations oc- curring about every fifty years (Steele and Henderson, 1984). A problem may be , however, that it is hardly possible to elaborate whether these declines are due to environmental influences or to fisheries impacts . The perspectives of a regime with sustainable yields de