希望后面每道题能有简短的答案，多谢。
Background Scenario
Read this carefully as it contains crucial information that will be important in the answers to the
questions that follow.
An island society exists in which the inhabitants live by harvesting fish from the surrounding
waters, and by gathering various commodities from the island's forests (fuelwood, berries, etc.).
The inhabitants also raise animals and vegetables on small plots of land. The island’s chieftain has
observed that the fish population noticeably declines when a lot of people devote a lot of effort to
fishing, but that the population regenerates if it is left undisturbed for a length of time.
Assume that everyone on the island can fish if they choose to, by making a boat out of fallen timber
or “borrowing” (hiring) someone else’s boat, in exchange for providing some household labour
services or forest products. The longer the time spent in the boat, the more time spent away from
alternative useful activities, and perhaps the more time that needs to be spent later providing the
goods or labour services to cover the boat hire.
Assume anyone can go into the forest and gather stuff, but that in any given week, the more people
gathering stuff, the further in you have to go to find whatever it is you are looking for, and the more
time and effort it takes.
All of the information presented above is relevant to the answers to the questions asked below.
Take home exam Page 3 of 4 Pages Semester 2, 2008
Answer all questions. The exam will be marked out of 60, and will be worth 30% of your final
mark for the unit. Question 10’s allotted 5 marks are “bonus” so that you can potentially achieve
65/60.
1. Describe in words the long run equilibrium in the local fishing industry assuming the island's
chieftain can enforce a rule that the total catch must be sustainable (must not cause the
population to decline). (5 marks)
2. How does that equilibrium compare to what might be described as the economically efficient
catch? (5 marks)
3. Assume that the unit value of caught fish is constant (in terms of the forest products or labour
services it can be exchanged for). Represent the equilibrium you have described in a diagram.
Spell out any extra assumptions you need to make. (5 marks)
4. Do you think the size of the catch in the prevailing equilibrium would be greater or lesser than
in the efficient equilibrium? Is it possible to tell? How does the marginal effort cost influence
the answer? (5 marks)
5. Assume now that the unit value (“relative price”) of fish rises and falls as the total catch is
smaller or larger (respectively). Redraw the diagram from the question 2. (10 marks)
6. In this situation, what can you say about the likely price of fish in the actual equilibrium
compared to the efficient case? (10 marks)
7. Who do you think would become richer in this scenario over time – the boat builders who rent
out their boats, or those that hire them to go fishing? (You can assume for this question that
people who build and hire boats are too busy doing that to go fishing, and those who fish are too
busy to build and maintain their own boats. You can also assume that anyone who wants to
build a boat can, and that in the long run, enough timber falls in the forest for as many boats to
be built as there are people who wish to build them.) Explain your answer. (10 marks)
Continued over.
Take home exam Page 4 of 4 Pages Semester 2, 2008
8. The chieftain has an adviser who has been studying a book that washed up on the beach titled
Economics for Dummies. The adviser tells the chieftain that the fishing industry could be
made more efficient than it is. In response to this advice, the chieftain declares that only
members of his extended family may supply boats for the purposes of fishing, which will have
the effect of restricting the number of boats that can be used for fishing. Do you expect the
adviser will be satisfied that this will result in efficiency in the fishing industry? Why or why
not? (5 marks)
9. Compared to before, who do you think out of the fishers or the boat owners (the chieftain's
family members) will be more enriched by the new arrangements? (Hint: are there economic
rents, and if so, who gets them?) (5 marks)
10. If you were the adviser to the chieftain, what would you suggest to him in terms of making the
fishing sector more efficient? (If you don't endorse the family boating monopoly, what would
you recommend instead?) (5 bonus marks)
END