Handling the Complexity of Predator-Prey Systems: Managerial Decision Making in Urban Economic Development and Sustainable Harvesting

In this paper we deal with complex systems and how to handle them. We focus on a well-known class of dynamical systems, namely predator-prey models, firstly by applying this type of model to urban economic development and secondly by testing models in an experimental setting in order to ascertain how successful human decision makers are in managing such a system. Regarding urban economic development, we illustrate that residential density and air pollution can be understood in terms of a predator-prey model and show how pollution control affects the level of the long-run equilibrium and the transition path towards it. We do this to support the understanding of how urban economic development works today and how it can be managed by decision makers via different interventions to improve the quality of living in urban areas. Regarding the task of handling predator-prey systems, we analyse the results of an experimental study in which participants take the role of a decision maker who seeks to maximise revenues from simultaneously harvesting a prey and a predator species while avoiding their overexploitation. We find that participants fall significantly shorter of the optimal strategy when the price assigned to the predator species is very high, compared to the price assigned to the prey species, in contrast to the case where the price difference is smaller. We offer several explanations for this observation that shed light on the human capability to handle predator-prey systems in general.