This book was written for students seeking an intermediate-level text in resource economics. It presumes that students have had differential calculus and intermediate microeconomics. It is designed to bridge the gap between texts which require only introductory economics and those which require graduate microeconomics and advanced methods of dynamic optimization such as the maximum principle and dynamic programming.

This text employs first-order difference equations to describe the change in a resource as it is harvested or extracted. Resource management is cast as a problem of optimal allocation over time, or dynamic optimization. The method of Lagrange multipliers is introduced to pose such problems conceptually and to examine the conditions that optimal management must satisfy. The unique and ideally appealing feature of this text is the use of Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet and Solver, a nonlinear programming algorithm within Excel, to solve numerical problems. Numerical problems help students see the dynamic trade-offs inherent in resource management and serve as a bridge from a general model to an empirical study of a real-world resource management problem. A familiarity with Excel is helpful but not essential. Chapter 2 introduces the student to Excel and shows how spreadsheets might be set up so that Solver can determine the optimal extraction of a nonrenewable resource or the optimal harvest of a renewable resource. By working through the examples in the text and the exercises at the end of each chapter the student will develop a feel and economic intuition for dynamic allocation problems along with an ability to solve and interpret numerical optimization problems.