Multimedia Waste Disposal Optimization under Uncertainty with an Ocean Option

Many communities face a waste management crisis. An increase in waste generation and decline in available landfill capacity have led to rapid increases in waste management costs. Using sewage sludge management in coastal New York and New Jersey as an example, this paper examines optimal multimedia waste disposal under cost uncertainty. Using expected value-variance analysis, the study looks at the effects on the optimal disposal strategy of uncertainty associated with waste-management cost and the community's risk preferences. The results indicate that, based on available cost data, the optimal strategy of a moderately risk-averse decision maker is to manage sludge through land-based facilities. These results hold over a wide range of risk-aversion parameters and even at low levels of cost uncertainty. Thus, the Ocean Dumping Ban Act of 1988 is consistent with such results.waste disposal, ocean dumping, EV (expected value-variance) analysis, Environmental Economics and Policy,

Abstract densities and ideals of sets

Abstract upper densities are monotone and subadditive functions from the power set of positive integers to the unit real interval that generalize the upper densities used in number theory, including the upper asymptotic density, the upper Banach density, and the upper logarithmic density. We answer a question posed by G. Grekos in 2013, and prove the existence of translation invariant abstract upper densities onto the unit interval, whose null sets are precisely the family of finite sets, or the family of sequences whose series of reciprocals converge. We also show that no such density can be atomless. (More generally, these results also hold for a large class of summable ideals.

A MODEL OF BYCATCH INVOLVING A PASSIVE USE STOCK

We develop a simple extension of the theory of multispecies fisheries management to analyze a problem where one fish or animal stock has no commercial market but instead is valued passively. We interpret a typical by bycatch problem as a standard multispecies fisheries management problem, and we develop a multispecies model incorporating both monetary damages associated with bycatch and variable biological relationships. We examine the behavior of the model with a numerical example focusing on the case of the bycatch of spotted and other dolphins in the eastern tropical Pacific (ETP) yellowfin tuna fishery.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

A Stochastic Bioeconomic Model with Research

This paper provides an incremental extension of a stochastic renewable resource model (Pindyck 1984) to include population dynamics research; i.e., the rate of accrual of information regarding the stochastic evolution of the stock, as a dynamic choice variable. While Pindyck models variance in stock growth as an exogenous parameter, our formulation endogenizes this variance and characterizes the impact of scientific information accrual on both the harvest decision and the present value of rents resulting from harvest activity. We illustrate the theoretical existence of an internal optimum in research effort using a numerical example.stochastic bioeconomic model, stochastic control, fisheries management, population dynamics research, renewable resource, uncertainty, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Q2, Q22, C61,