IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/enreec/v14y1999i4p463-479.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

De- and Reforestation: Stability, Instability and Limit Cycles

Author

Listed:
  • Franz Wirl

Abstract

The optimal intertemporal use of forests is a traditional and extensively investigated topic with recent emphasis on sustainable uses. The political discussion about the clearing of tropical forests adds a topical, policy dimension to this investigation. This study shows that cyclical policies -- i.e., clearing is followed by reforestation and then again clearing and so on indefinitely -- may be optimal. This possibility, which is due to two things -- the growth of biomass, such as trees, and the costs of clearing and reforestation -- is overlooked in the corresponding literature. As a consequence, it is possible that present clearing practices, observable in many developing countries, may be an optimal, yet transient policy, that will be followed by reforestation as the developed countries with again expanding forests indicate. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1999

Suggested Citation

  • Franz Wirl, 1999. "De- and Reforestation: Stability, Instability and Limit Cycles," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 14(4), pages 463-479, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:enreec:v:14:y:1999:i:4:p:463-479
    DOI: 10.1023/A:1008307119588
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1023/A:1008307119588
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1023/A:1008307119588?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hartl, Richard F., 1987. "A simple proof of the monotonicity of the state trajectories in autonomous control problems," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 211-215, February.
    2. Jess Benhabib & Kazuo Nishimura, 2012. "The Hopf Bifurcation and Existence and Stability of Closed Orbits in Multisector Models of Optimal Economic Growth," Springer Books, in: John Stachurski & Alain Venditti & Makoto Yano (ed.), Nonlinear Dynamics in Equilibrium Models, edition 127, chapter 0, pages 51-73, Springer.
    3. Skiba, A K, 1978. "Optimal Growth with a Convex-Concave Production Function," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(3), pages 527-539, May.
    4. Tahvonen, Olli & Salo, Seppo, 1996. "Nonconvexities in Optimal Pollution Accumulation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 160-177, September.
    5. Johansson, Per-Olov, 1990. "Valuing Environmental Damage," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 6(1), pages 34-50, Spring.
    6. Hofstad, Ole, 1997. "Woodland Deforestation by Charcoal Supply to Dar es Salaam," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 17-32, May.
    7. Schulz, Carl-Erik & Skonhoft, Anders, 1996. "Wildlife management, land-use and conflicts," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(3), pages 265-280, July.
    8. Feichtinger, Gustav & Novak, Andreas & Wirl, Franz, 1994. "Limit cycles in intertemporal adjustment models : Theory and applications," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 353-380, March.
    9. Berck, Peter, 1981. "Optimal management of renewable resources with growing demand and stock externalities," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 105-117, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wirl, Franz, 1999. "Complex, dynamic environmental policies," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 19-41, January.
    2. Wirl, Franz & Feichtinger, Gustav, 2005. "History dependence in concave economies," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 57(4), pages 390-407, August.
    3. G. Feichtinger & F. Wirl, 2000. "Instabilities in Concave, Dynamic, Economic Optimization," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 107(2), pages 275-286, November.
    4. Wirl, Franz, 2002. "Stability and limit cycles in competitive equilibria subject to adjustment costs and dynamic spillovers," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 375-398, March.
    5. Wirl, Franz, 2004. "Sustainable growth, renewable resources and pollution: Thresholds and cycles," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 1149-1157, March.
    6. Wirl, Franz, 2004. "Thresholds in concave renewable resource models," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 259-267, February.
    7. Dawid, Herbert & Kopel, Michael, 1997. "On the Economically Optimal Exploitation of a Renewable Resource: The Case of a Convex Environment and a Convex Return Function," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 272-297, October.
    8. Horan, R.D. & Bulte, E.H., 2004. "Optimal and open access harvesting and multi-use species in a second best world," Other publications TiSEM 95000e50-7225-4f4d-aeaf-a, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    9. Kort, P.M. & Feichtinger, G. & Hartl, R.F. & Haunschmied, J.L., 1996. "Optimal Enforcement Policies (Crackdowns) on a Drug Market," Other publications TiSEM 8f874586-670a-470a-95a6-b, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    10. d’Albis, Hippolyte & Augeraud-Veron, Emmanuelle & Venditti, Alain, 2012. "Business cycle fluctuations and learning-by-doing externalities in a one-sector model," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(5), pages 295-308.
    11. Herbert Dawid & Gerd Muehlheusser, 2019. "Smart products: liability, timing of market introduction, and investments in product safety," CESifo Working Paper Series 7673, CESifo.
    12. Caulkins, Jonathan P. & Feichtinger, Gustav & Grass, Dieter & Hartl, Richard F. & Kort, Peter M. & Seidl, Andrea, 2013. "When to make proprietary software open source," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 1182-1194.
    13. Gardner Brown, 2000. "Renewable Natural Resource Management and Use Without Markets," Working Papers 0025, University of Washington, Department of Economics.
    14. Franz Wirl, 1994. "The ramsey model revisited: The optimality of cyclical consumption and growth," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 60(1), pages 81-98, February.
    15. Tatiana Kiseleva & Florian Wagener, 2015. "Bifurcations of Optimal Vector Fields," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 40(1), pages 24-55, February.
    16. Farzin, Y. Hossein & Akao, Ken-Ichi, 2006. "When is it Optimal to Exhaust a Resource in a Finite Time?," Natural Resources Management Working Papers 12153, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    17. Richard Horan & Erwin Bulte, 2004. "Optimal and Open Access Harvesting of Multi-Use Species in a Second-Best World," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 28(3), pages 251-272, July.
    18. Ulla Lehmijoki, 2004. "On the Beach? Sustainability, Optimal Pollution, and Optimal Population," DEGIT Conference Papers c009_039, DEGIT, Dynamics, Economic Growth, and International Trade.
    19. Yacov Tsur & Amos Zemel, 2017. "Steady state properties of multi-state economic models," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 50(2), pages 506-521, May.
    20. Seidl, Andrea & Caulkins, Jonathan P. & Hartl, Richard F. & Kort, Peter M., 2018. "Serious strategy for the makers of fun: Analyzing the option to switch from pay-to-play to free-to-play in a two-stage optimal control model with quadratic costs," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 267(2), pages 700-715.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:enreec:v:14:y:1999:i:4:p:463-479. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.