Stabilizing employment in a fluctuating resource economy

We consider a resource management problem in which the management objective is to minimize fluctuations in resource economics. Stabilizing management policies consist of memoryless state feedback control strategies for a class of discrete-time resource models which contain unknown but bounded fluctuations. The underlying theory is based on conditions developed for Lyapunov-type stability of sets. The design of the stabilizing policies is illustrated by a simulation example from resource economics. Specifically, employment of fishermen is stabilized by using a subsidizing and taxing policy in an open-access common-property fishery in which the value of the resource and the resource level fluctuate, and where entry and exit dynamics are determined by fluctuating revenues obtained from the fishery.This work was supported by NSF and AFOSR under Grant No. ECS-86-02524.The support by the Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation is greatly acknowledged.