Universität Siegen
Fachbereich Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Wirtschaftsinformatik und Wirtschaftsrecht
Volkswirtschaftliche Diskussionsbeiträge
Thomas Eichner und Rüdiger Pethig
Harvesting in an integrated general equilibrium model
Harvesting of prey biomass is analyzed in an integrated ecological-economic system whose submodels, a predator-prey ecosystem and a simple economy, are microfounded dynamic general equilibrium models. These submodels are interdependent because the ecosystem responds to harvesting - through the reactions of optimizing individual organisms - by changing the provision of public ecosystem services to consumers. General analytical results are derived regarding the impact of harvesting policies on short-run equilibria of both submodels, on population dynamics, and on stationary states of the integrated model. A key insight is that prey biomass carries a positive ecosystem price which needs to be added as a tax mark-up to the economic price of harvested biomass to attain allocative efficiency. Further information on the dynamics is gained by resorting to numerical analysis of the policy regimes of zero harvesting, laissez-faire harvesting and efficient harvesting.