In his seminal 1931 paper, Harold Hotelling demonstrates that in a competitive market for a nonrenewable resource, the price of the resource changes at a rate equal to the interest rate, or to the return on capital. This analysis augments and further justifies Hotelling's Rule by demonstrating that it holds within a multisector optimization model with human and physical capital, and with both renewable and non-renewable resources. When consumers and producers engage in optimizing behavior, on the margin the net return to physical capital equals the return to harvesting a renewable resource or extracting a nonrenewable resource. Moreover, this analysis reveals that the alleged inconsistencies of Hotelling's Rule with empirical findings are likely the result of market characteristics specific to each empirical study, not the foundational logic of Hotelling's rule.
As weather patterns across the globe change in response to global warming, we should expect more strain on existing institutions. This paper demonstrates how weather risk induces farmers into a risk-pooling equilibrium whereby private property rights are voluntarily relinquished. We find that as the spacial variability of rainfall increases, rising investment and increased subplot dispersion are complementary hedges against weather risk. With subplot dispersion, the cost of preserving private property rights rises, incentivizing farmers to develop a system of common property rights. In contrast, investment and subplot dispersion become substitute hedges as weather risk diminishes. We provide a dynamic theoretical model which complements previous empirical work on the impact of weather risk on property rights.
Does economic justice stymie economic development? This paper demonstrates that sustainability is compatible with Rawlsian intertemporal justice, even when considering human capital and natural resources. The methodology employed herein extends and amends previous works that (1) do not consider human capital or renewable resources, and (2) rely upon the application of standard Lagrangian methodology to a continuum of nonlinear constraints. This approach circumvents problems associated with earlier works by internalizing constraints and demonstrating two sufficient conditions which guarantee existence of a Rawlsian maximin path.
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