Managing Systems with Non-convex Positive Feedback

William Brock and D. Starrett ()

Environmental & Resource Economics, 2003, vol. 26, issue 4, 575-602

Abstract: We study here optimal management of dynamic ecological systemsthat exhibit a destabilizing positive feedback. The prototypeexample is that of a shallow lake in which phosphorous loadingplaced by anthropogenic activities (fertilizers for farmingand gardening) is stored in sediments until a critical levelis reached after which there is a destabilizing return to thewater – the tradeoff between farming interests and lake qualitygenerates an optimal control problem. We show that in such systems, there may be a variety of local optima and associatedbasins of attraction wherein the optimal path may depend onstarting state (phosphorous stock). We characterize the variouspossible optimal behaviors and identify the ambiguities thatcan only be resolved by choice of functional form. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2003

Keywords: basins of attraction; dynamic optimization; lake ecology; non-convex dynamics; positive feedback (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (80)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1023/B:EARE.0000007350.11040.e3 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:enreec:v:26:y:2003:i:4:p:575-602

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... al/journal/10640/PS2

DOI: 10.1023/B:EARE.0000007350.11040.e3

Access Statistics for this article

Environmental & Resource Economics is currently edited by Ian J. Bateman

More articles in Environmental & Resource Economics from Springer, European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().