A Stochastic Analysis of the Holling Resilience of an Orchard

Abstract:     
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 orchard's Holling resilience. First, we model an orchard as a stochastic ecological-economic system. Second, we compute this orchard's 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.

Keywords: Ecological-Economic System, Holling Resilience, Limiting Behavior, Orchard

JEL Classification: C44, Q57

Accepted Paper Series