An Analysis of the World’s Environment and Population Dynamics with Varying Carrying Capacity, Concerns and Skepticism

Amnon Levy, Peter Berck () and Khorshed Chowdhury ()
Additional contact information
Peter Berck: University of California, Berkeley
Khorshed Chowdhury: University of Wollongong, http://business.uow.edu.au/econ/who/UOW010509.html

Economics Working Papers from School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia

Abstract: Due to the open-access nature of the environment we consider an ad hoc adjustment of people’s footprints to the quality of the environment. The adjustment is due to concerns, but hindered by skepticism about announced changes in the state of the environment. Changes in the quality of the environment affect Earth’s carrying capacity. By expanding the Lotka-Volterra predator-prey model to include these features we show that despite skepticism the environment-population system does not collapse. We also show that in the ideal case of no skepticism, the interplay between the non-optimally changing environmental concerns and carrying capacity sends the world’s environment and human population on an oscillating course that leads to a unique interior steady state. These results require no further technological, social or international progress.

Keywords: Environment; Population; Carrying Capacity; Concerns; Skepticism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2010
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env
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Journal Article: An analysis of the world's environment and population dynamics with varying carrying capacity, concerns and skepticism (2012)
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