Final Exam Topic Review

Renewable Resources, Land, and Disaster Risk

Exam logistics

• Date: Wednesday, December 9
• Focus: Topics from Weeks 8–13
• Cumulative tools: discounting, externalities, rights, and valuation
• Authoritative instructions: Brightspace announcement for the exam

You should be able to

Ecosystem services

• trace stock → function → service → benefit → value;
• identify thresholds, resilience, double counting, and payment-design issues.

Fisheries

• interpret logistic growth and maximum sustainable yield;
• connect stock to catch per unit effort;
• explain open-access rent dissipation;
• compare caps, catch shares, protected areas, and community rules.

Forests, land, and water

• distinguish biological from economic rotation;
• interpret Faustmann land expectation value;
• add carbon, amenity, and fire risk to a rotation choice;
• analyze bid rent, conversion, TDRs, and groundwater regimes.

Disaster and insurance

• distinguish hazard, exposure, vulnerability, and expected loss;
• explain rare events, correlated loss, and stress testing;
• distinguish adverse selection from moral hazard;
• analyze premium caps, insurer exit, public backstops, and mitigation spillovers.

Practice prompts

1. Find MSY for a logistic growth function and explain why it may not be efficient.
2. Compare a catch share with a community harvest rule.
3. Explain how discount rate, carbon value, and fire probability change forest rotation.
4. Design a TDR market and identify a third-party effect.
5. Calculate an insurance premium from expected loss, administration, and capital load.
6. Trace a premium cap through take-up, insurer supply, selection, and fiscal exposure.