Gardner Brown

University of Washington Seattle | UW · Department of Economics

This perspective article begins with speculation about my early interest in conservation at age six and traces my personal development until I became an assistant professor. My contribution to the beginning and development of nonmarket valuation, including an early publication on the stated preference method, is included. All but one of the discuss...

This review focuses on four key scholars who were instrumental in helping to launch the field of natural resource economics: Siegfried von Ciriacy-Wantrup, James Crutchfield, John Krutilla, and Anthony Scott. Their contributions include recognizing natural resources as renewable capital, thereby altering the important dynamic dimensions of an effic...

A transcript of an interview of Douglass C. North by Gardner Brown, with an introduction by Dean Lueck.

Standard economic theory is built on key assumptions regarding concavity and convexity, particular with respect to the production possibility frontier. Non-convexity is readily demonstrated using a two species conventional model. Now that ecosystem services are growing in prominence it is important to confirm that typical natural resource productio...

Walker and Stiles argue that elephant populations are not declining. The facts say otherwise. Loxodonta africana numbers have plummeted by more than 50% continent-wide in the past 40 years, a reduction now compounded by increases in range loss, conflict with humans, and resurgence in poaching ([ 1

Manyeconomistshaveembracedaparadigmcharacterizedbyperfectinformation,rational expectations and an otherwise benign environment in which perfect competition reigns, with very minor asides for imperfect competition. Rumblings of opposition have been growing louder. Nobel prizes are being awarded to scholars who have taken us out of this historic stra...

Soil erosion and fertilizer run-off cause serious flow externalities in downstream environments through-out the world. Social costs include e.g. loss of health, life and production due to pollution and eutrophication of freshwater resources, reduced life of hydro-power plants, increased turbidity, and degradation of coral reefs and marine resources...

Daily and Ehrlich have described the current state of our epidemiological environment in chilling detail. While their point is that human beings interact and affect the epidemiological environment in a variety of ways, the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria strikes us as one aspect that we can begin to analyse immediately. The evoluti...

Endangered species have economic value even if there are no markets for these species. They have existence value and the value we place on future generations being able to enjoy them. Recognition of that choice involves forgoing other alternatives. In the real world budgets prevent saving all species. Even Noah would have had to make choices becaus...

Greater complexity in renewable resource models is achieved by acknowledging that species interact through a predator-prey relationship in which both species are harvested. The price of greater complexity is that traditional concepts, such as maximum sustained yield (MSY), have to be revised dramatically. Moreover, having chosen greater complexity,...

Greater ecosystem complexity is recognized by studying a two species predator prey model under two property rights regimes: free entry and a system such as individual quotas which execute an economically optimal solution. A bottom-up management experiment is discussed in the context of Lake Victoria fisheries.

In recent years bacteria have become increasingly resistant to antibiotics, leading to a decline in the effectiveness of antibiotics in treating infectious disease. This paper uses a framework based on an epidemiological model of infection in which antibiotic effectiveness is treated as a nonrenewable resource. In the model presented, bacterial res...

Natural resources, by their nature, are not readily bent to the status of private property. Efficient resource use is complicated by jurisdictional externalities, public goods, non-use values and beneficiaries spatially separated from the location of resources. The task is made more challenging by ecological complexity which obscures cause (benefit...

In recent years bacteria have become increasingly resistant to antibiotics, leading to a decline in the effectiveness of antibiotics in treating infectious disease. This paper uses a framework based on an epidemiological model of infection in which antibiotic effectiveness is treated as a nonrenewable resource. In the model presented, bacterial res...

We examine the structure of preferences for mitigating impacts of global climate change that will not occur during the lifetimes of most who are alive today. Because no market data exist for such distant markets, a statedpreference approach is used. The analysis is based on the random-parameters logit model, and the results indicate substantial het...

Natural resources, by their nature, are not readily bent to the status of private property. Efficient resource use is complicated by jurisdictional externalities, public goods, non-use values, and beneficiaries spatially separated from the location of resources. The task is made more challenging by ecological complexity that obscures cause (benefit...

We offer three reasons why economics matters more to species protection than many people think and what this implies for the ongoing debate over the reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Economics matters because (1) human behavior generally, and economic parameters in particular, help determine the degree of risk to a species; (2)...

Include land in a neoclassical growth model and introduce a standard biogeographic relation between species recliners (biodiversity) and land. Assume that species provide utility. The optimal constant amount of land preserved for species is obtained from steady-state conditions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, a high discount rate preserves more l...

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 is one of our most far-reaching and controversial environmental laws. While the benefits of protecting endangered species accrue to the entire nation, a significant fraction of the costs are borne by the private landowners who shelter about 90 percent of the nearly 1,000 listed species. The pressure to know whethe...

A metapopulation illustrated by barnacles has a spatial distribution and a two-stage life cycle in the model developed here. Space limits expansion. Introducing a profitable harvest activity of adults leads to harvest at only one site, a solution driven by biological increasing returns. The model is of interdisciplinary interest because the natural...

This paper argues that the structure of the government in the former Soviet Union and the present Russia has led to inefficiency in harvesting non-renewable resources such as timber. It analyzes the dynamic optimization problems of the central and local authorities in choosing the path of harvesting and explains the sources and effects of inefficie...

This paper describes efforts to build a supply curve for survival of the northern spotted owl in the wild. A survey of experts and a population dynamics simulation model relate species survival to habitat capacity. Home range studies provide the basis for determining the owl's area requirements. Cataloging land in the range of the owl in terms of s...

Because species survival is not certain, the decision to "save" a species is not an all-or-nothing choice but rather a marginal one. The appropriate unit for both benefit and cost functions is the likelihood of survival and the appropriate question is how certain we want to be of species survival. The intensity of the species preservation debate is...

The expected future value of endangered species and other biological resources is extremely uncertain inasmuch as it depends on the future discovery of knowledge as well as future tastes. The economics discipline has no special advantage in this unenviable set of circumstances. Nevertheless, this paper sets forth a few simple economic principles wh...

This paper examines optimal recovery paths following perturbations (e.g., El Nino) in a coupled ecosystem. A simple 2-trophic level model is developed in which the harvested species also feeds upon a prey species. As might be expected, it is optimal to refrain from harvesting when both species are severely impacted by the perturbation. Perhaps surp...

This paper addresses some of the conceptual and empirical issues involved with estimating the economic costs of oil spills, using a comprehensive economic analysis of the 1978 supertanker Amoco Cadiz incident as a case study. Estimates are made of the market and nonmarket-valued costs of the spill and their distribution among the residents of the a...

Although prey may not have commercial value, their economic value can be ascertained in a predator-prey model if the predator has a harvest value. The economic optimal (recovery) path of the predator and prey are carefully described when growth is quadratic in the predator (prey) and linear in prey (predator). Parameter values, in part, resembling...

The hedonic travel cost method is a technique which reveals how much users are willing to pay for the individual characteristics of outdoor recreation sites. The prices of recreation attributes are estimated by regressing travel costs on the bundles of characteristics associated with each of several potential destination sites. The demand for site...

Reviews a broad set of revealed preference approaches bearing on outdoor recreation demand, from the simple travel cost to the more complex hedonic travel cost and demand system models. Attempts to highlight the weaknesses of the less successful approaches and indicates the relative strengths of the remaining alternatives. A model of the household...

It is argued that the most commonly used measures of natural resource scarcity are deficient. The discussion begins with some general comments on natural resource scarcity, then turns to a description and evaluation of each of the major scarcity indices: unit cost, product output prices, and rental rates. Rental rates or a useful proxy, marginal di...

Production equations are specified that allow more precise explanation and quantification than previously available of relationships between the breeding population of the mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) and its breeding environment. A model is detailed whereby maximum physical sustained yield may be identified under restrictive assumptions. A previou...

The purpose of this paper is to derive an optimum program for managing a common-property natural resource-fish, fowl, and some groundwater resources-whose rate of growth of the resource stock depends on the resource stock level and the current rate of "extraction." Looking forward in time, the dynamic property of this problem is provided by the fac...

Optimal economic use of an aquifer over time is analyzed under conditions of economic growth, inequality of groundwater withdrawal and consumption, and availability of surface water and artificial recharge. The value of an aquifer as a natural water quality treatment facility is derived.

Thesis--University of California, Berkeley. Microfilm.

If a manager of a given water resource is uncertain of his power to set optimum stream standards or optimum effluent charges at every moment in time, there exist conditions, qualitatively identified, under which it may be dynamically more efficient for him to establish present water quality levels that will be optimum only at some future date than...

It is argued that the use of an incorrect discount rate, the application of procedures that overestimate net benefits, and the failure to charge a scarcity price for water are inappropriate arguments against the value of the California State Water Project. However, the existence of alternative public investment opportunities and technological progr...

A simple model is developed for determining the socially optimum price to charge locationally differentiated irrigation districts for both surface and groundwater supplies. Steady-state conditions are assumed for groundwater conditions and water demand functions. A divergence between social and private optimums arises from the existence of unadjudi...