Seung Jick Yoo

An Economic Analysis of Yard Care and Synthetic Chemical Use: The Case of San Francisco

Yard care is an economically important household production activity that also has potentially significant environmental or health impacts. Of particular concern are the possible negative impacts of using synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. But economic models and empirical analyses of yard care and chemical use are rare. We develop a simple model of household production and consumption to analyze yard care and chemical use. We then estimate a multinomial logit model of these behavioral choices with household data from San Francisco. Attitudes towards the quality of ones outdoor residential environment and time scarcity are important determinants of the odds of chemical use whereas financial variables play the major role in determining the odds that people have and care for yards. These results could help to improve educational or marketing campaigns that aim to reduce potential or actual problems associated with yard chemical use. Better data for models similar to this one are needed for future research.

Renewal theory and natural resource regulatory policy under uncertainty

Abstract In this paper we show how renewal theory can be used to model a large class of natural resource regulatory problems involving systemic and policy uncertainty. We stress the policy implications of our approach and then we suggest possible extensions.

A Probabilistic Approach to Optimal Orchard Management

The formal study of orchard management in which an orchard is viewed as a jointly determined ecological-economic system is still in its infancy. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a new way of looking at the problem of orchard management that has three distinct advantages to it. First, we model an orchard as an ecological-economic system. Second, consistent with the normal behavior of such systems, our approach to the orchard management problem is explicitly probabilistic. Finally, the optimization problem we suggest an orchard manager solve is one in which an economic criterion function is minimized subject to an ecological constraint. This constraint says that the probability that the orchard under study is not Holling resilient is at most as large as an exogenously given value.

A Stochastic Analysis of the Holling Resilience of an Orchard

Recently, Batabyal and Yoo (2007) have proposed a new probabilistic approach to orchard management. In this approach, a manager minimizes an economic criterion function, namely, the long run expected net cost of orchard management subject to an ecological constraint which says that the probability that an orchard is not Holling resilient is at most as large as an exogenously given value. In this note, we continue this line of inquiry and shed additional light on an orchards Holling resilience. First, we model an orchard as a stochastic ecological-economic system. Second, we compute this orchards Holling resilience in a general way. Finally, we study additional aspects of the limiting behavior of our measure of the Holling resilience of the orchard under study.

A complete characterization of mean wait times for citizens in the non-preemptive corruption regime

Recently, Batabyal and Yoo (2004) have used a queuing model with two types of citizens (high and low opportunity cost of time) to compute mean wait times in queue for the so called non-preemptive corruption regime. The purpose of this note is to extend the Batabyal and Yoo (2004) analysis. Specifically, a queuing model with [image omitted] types of citizens is first studied. Next, mean wait times in queue are calculated for all n types of citizens. Finally, the implications of the findings are discussed.

Bid Values and their Role in Land Development Over Time and Under Uncertainty

Recently, Batabyal (2000) has demonstrated that when the land development question is studied in an intertemporal and random setting, it is possible that a landowner will never develop (always preserve) his or her land. This result arises because the landowner in Batabyal (2000) maximizes the likelihood of accepting the best possible bid of development. What happens when a landowner employs the following decision rule: Develop land as long as the dollar value of a bid exceeds a stochastic reservation level of revenue? In this paper, we provide an interesting answer to this question. First, we establish that the likelihood of developing land with this decision rule is always positive. Even so, we point out that on average, a landowner who uses this decision rule will always end up preserving his or her land.

A Measurement Issue Regarding the Link between a Region's Creative Infrastructure and Its Income

The creative capital possessed by the members of the creative class in region j is either acquired through education or present innately in these members. Therefore, the creative infrastructure (CI_j) in the jth region is the sum of a part (CI_j^E) representing creative capital obtained through education and a second part (CI_j^I) denoting creative capital present innately in the creative class members. A researcher wishes to estimate the true relationship between the jth region’s log income per creative class member (y_j ) and its creative infrastructure (CI_j ). He has data on CI_j^E but not on CI_j^I. We study whether an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression of y_j on a constant and CI_j^E will produce an unbiased estimate of the impact of CI_j on y_j in two cases. In the first case, CI_j^E and CI_j^I are uncorrelated. In the second case, CI_j^E and CI_j^I are positively correlated.