Cournotian dynamics of spatially distributed renewable resources

Abstract

We extend modern Walrasian economics, and in particular the results on Cournot convergence and dynamics, by focusing on renewable resources in a spatial setting. Building on the harvesting model of Behringer and Upmann (2014) we endogenize prices and investigate the two cases of durable and non-durable renewable commodities. We find that endogenizing prices is sufficient to prevent the full exploitation result and look at how competition affects not only the stock but also the temporal incentives for exploitation. We derive convergence results in static and dynamic settings which suggest that the classical Cournotian outcomes may prevail.