IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sie/siegen/110-03.html

A Microfoundation of Predator-Prey Dynamics

Author

Abstract

Predator-prey relationships account for an important part of all interactions between species. In this paper we provide a microfoundation for such predator-prey relations in a food chain. Basic entities of our analysis are representative organisms of species modelled similar to economic households. With prices as indicators of scarcity, organisms are assumed to behave as if they maximize their net biomass subject to constraints which express the organisms' risk of being preyed upon during predation. Like consumers, organisms face a 'budget constraint' requiring their expenditure on prey biomass not to exceed their revenue from supplying own biomass. Short-run ecosystem equilibria are defined and derived. The net biomass acquired by the representative organism in the short term determines the positive or negative population growth. Moving short-run equilibria constitute the dynamics of the predator-prey relations that are characterized in numerical analysis. The population dynamics derived here turn out to differ significantly from those assumed in the standard Lotka-Volterra model.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Eichner & Rüdiger Pethig, 2003. "A Microfoundation of Predator-Prey Dynamics," Volkswirtschaftliche Diskussionsbeiträge 110-03, Universität Siegen, Fakultät Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Wirtschaftsinformatik und Wirtschaftsrecht.
    • Handle: RePEc:sie:siegen:110-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.wiwi.uni-siegen.de/vwl/repec/sie/papers/110-03.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christiaans, Thomas & Eichner, Thomas & Pethig, Rudiger, 2007. "Optimal pest control in agriculture," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(12), pages 3965-3985, December.
    2. Thomas Eichner & Rüdiger Pethig, 2007. "Harvesting in an integrated general equilibrium model," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 37(1), pages 233-252, May.
    3. Thomas Eichner & Rüdiger Pethig, 2006. "Efficient nonanthropocentric nature protection," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 26(1), pages 47-74, January.
    4. Eichner, Thomas & Pethig, Rudiger, 2006. "Economic land use, ecosystem services and microfounded species dynamics," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 52(3), pages 707-720, November.
    5. Pierre Salmon, 2003. "The Assignment of Powers in an Open-ended European Union," CESifo Working Paper Series 993, CESifo.
    6. John Tschirhart, 2012. "Biology as a Source of Non-convexities in Ecological Production Functions," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 51(2), pages 189-213, February.
    7. Thomas Christiaans & Thomas Eichner & Rüdiger Pethig, 2005. "A Micro-Level 'Consumer Approach' to Species Population Dynamics," CESifo Working Paper Series 1530, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • Q20 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:sie:siegen:110-03. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Michael Gail (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fwsiede.html .

    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.