Limits to the Privatization of Fishery Resources: Comment (original) (raw)

Fisheries economics: cutting a broad swath in the field of scientific inquiry

Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 2010

The study of fisheries is the common theme running through the six papers in this special issue. For many years, this has been of interest to academics, government legislators and regulators alike. If we cast our sights back almost one hundred years, Warming's (1911) seminal article investigated the issue of resource rents from the exploitation of fisheries. Moving forward forty years Gordon (1954) and Scott (1955) set in place static and dynamic frameworks, respectively, for better understanding the motivations that underlay behavioural choices of fishers under conditions of both open access and sole ownership. Their papers highlighted the potential usefulness of integrating two fields of study: fisheries biology and economic optimization. Bio-economic modeling became the workhorse of the 1970s-1980s. Clark (1983) laid out the formal circumstances under which overexploitation, rent dissipation, and the potential for species extinction might arise while Clark and Munro (1975) pushed the boundaries even further by examining the linkage between fish stock dynamics and capital theory. On the management side, Moloney and Pearse (1979) proposed that fisheries managers adopt the use of individual transferable quotas (ITQs) as a way of discouraging the race-for-fish mentality that had developed with the introduction of limited entry, itself designed to deal with the excesses of open access. Squires's (1987) use of duality theory promoted a better understanding the micro-econometric foundations of fishing behaviour and spawned a large and expanding empirical literature that produced estimates of the value of rent dissipation in suboptimally managed fisheries (Dupont 1990) and laid the foundations for measuring capacity utilization and excess capacity (Dupont et al. 2002). More computing power was aligned with dynamic optimization models (Bjørndal 1988) and allowed researchers to examine behaviour of not just the representative fisher but also to incorporate both heterogeneity and spatial considerations into the analysis (Sanchirico and Wilen 1999; Smith 2000). The six papers in this issue all further our understanding of the economics of the fishery and they reveal the breadth of scientific inquiry that we have come to expect from this literature. Increasingly, the study of the interrelationships among marine species, their habitats, and their human exploiters draws upon not just economic and biological models, but is also informed by literature from fields as diverse as the study of legal/regulatory systems and psychological models underlying risk-taking in uncertain environments. The

Bio-economies of scope and the discard problem in mulitple species fisheries

2007

This paper considers the problem of fisheries management when targeting individual species is costly and at-sea discards of fish by fishermen are unobserved by the regulator. A dynamic model is developed to balance ecological interdependencies among multiple fish species, and scope economies implicit in a costly targeting technology. Stock conditions, ecosystem interaction, technological specification, and relative prices under which at sea discards are acute are identified. Three regulatory regimes, species-specific harvest quotas, landing taxes, and revenue quotas, are contrasted against a hypothetical sole owner problem. An optimal plan under all regimes precludes discarding. For both very low and very high degrees of technological interdependence, first best welfare is close to that achieved through any of the regulatory regimes. In general, however, landing taxes welfare dominate species-specific quota regulation; a revenue quota fares the worst.

Economic principles of sustainable fisheries management

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2001

Economic prescriptions for the sustainable management of fisheries have typically been framed in the context of commercial fisheries. Fishery management failures have been characterized as a consequence of disjointedness between individually rational decisions and globally sensible outcomes-the "tragedy of the commons." The solutions proposed by economists flow from the insight that rational self-interest can lead to socially beneficial outcomes when ownership is secure and prices reflect the opportunity cost of resource use. Theoretical and empirical analyses have demonstrated that sole ownership, individual quotas, territorial use rights, fishing cooperatives, and common property management regimes can promote biologically and economically sustainable fisheries. Nevertheless, implementation of these "solutions" has met with resistance, due in part to the impossibility of uncoupling species within ecological systems and conflict between the proposed solutions and broadly accepted concepts of social justice. The problem of devising a sustainable management strategy is exacerbated in fisheries with diverse consumptive and non-consumptive users. An empirically based simulation-optimization model is used to characterize the biological and economic effects of alternative management regimes in a fishery with commercial and sport fishers. The results are generalized to the case of additional use and nonuse values.

On implementing maximum economic yield in commercial fisheries

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2010

Economists have long argued that a fishery that maximizes its economic potential usually will also satisfy its conservation objectives. Recently, maximum economic yield (MEY) has been identified as a primary management objective for Australian fisheries and is under consideration elsewhere. However, first attempts at estimating MEY as an actual management target for a real fishery (rather than a conceptual or theoretical exercise) have highlighted some substantial complexities generally unconsidered by fisheries economists. Here, we highlight some of the main issues encountered in our experience and their implications for estimating and transitioning to MEY. Using a bioeconomic model of an Australian fishery for which MEY is the management target, we note that unconstrained optimization may result in effort trajectories that would not be acceptable to industry or managers. Different assumptions regarding appropriate constraints result in different outcomes, each of which may be considered a valid MEY. Similarly, alternative treatments of prices and costs may result in differing estimates of MEY and their associated effort trajectories. To develop an implementable management strategy in an adaptive management framework, a set of assumptions must be agreed among scientists, economists, and industry and managers, indicating that operationalizing MEY is not simply a matter of estimating the numbers but requires strong industry commitment and involvement.

Advances in Fisheries Economics

2007

In recognition of Professor Munro's contribution to the advancement of fisheries economics and management, a group of his former students and colleagues organised a conference in his honour at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada in August of 2004. The conference was attended by fisheries economists, officials and managers from all over the world. Conference topics were ones to which Professor Munro has made major contributions over his career. A number of the papers presented at this conference, as well as invited papers, were considered for inclusion in this festschrift. After a thorough referee process, the final set of papers was selected and is now presented in this book as a tribute to Professor Munro. The editors accepted the responsibility for bringing this volume to publication because of the importance of Professor Munro's contribution to the advancement of the economics of the fishery and because of our long-standing relationship with Professor Munro as a mentor, a colleague and a friend. We thank all those who contributed to the success of the UBC conference, in particular, Mrs. Maria Smith. We thank the authors for their contributions to this festschrift. The editors have benefited greatly from the assistance of numerous anonymous referees, to whom we are indebted. We thank Miss Katherine Viner and Miss Venetia Hargreaves-Allen, who served as editorial assistants. We are grateful to Laura Price and Nigel Balmford of Blackwell Publishing for editorial support.

Economics of biodiversity and sustainable fisheries management

Ecological Economics, 2009

Marine ecosystems are complex, and many marine species are ecologically interdependent. As a result, losing a species could produce a cascading effect on other species. Fishery scientists advocate an ecosystem-based approach to fishery management to meet long-term sustainable goals. This paper models the complex interrelationships among species and the relationship between biomass growth and phenotypic diversity. We found that the equilibrium stock and catch/yield levels are overestimated when the diversity is not accounted for. Consequently, if species are diverse, fishery policy based on a single fishery management could overestimate catch potentials and potentially results in biological overfishing and stock collapse.

Balanced harvesting in fisheries: economic considerations

ICES Journal of Marine Science, 2015

This paper explores economic aspects of a recent proposal to shift fisheries to a “Balanced Harvesting” (BH) strategy, as a means to achieve the goal, set by the Convention on Biological Diversity and related to the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries, of “conservation of ecosystem structure and functioning” within fishery ecosystems. Studies indicate that a BH strategy—broadening the range of species and sizes caught in the aquatic ecosystem, and lowering exploitation rates for some conventionally targeted species—may provide improved ecological performance relative to conventional harvesting strategies. However, the potential economic implications have received little attention to date. This paper provides a preliminary economic assessment of BH, focusing on six main themes: (i) assessing benefits and costs, (ii) factors affecting the economics of BH, (iii) economic issues in implementing the ingredients of BH, (iv) effects of incremental and/or partial implementation of BH, (v) trans...

Harvesting Economic Models and Catch‐To‐Biomass Dependence: The Case of Small Pelagic Fish

Natural Resource Modeling, 2011

In the case of small pelagic fish, it seems reasonable to consider harvest functions depending nonlinearly on fishing effort and fish stock. Indeed, empirical evidence about these fish species suggests that marginal catch does not necessarily react in a linear way neither to changes in fishing effort nor in fish stock levels. This is in contradiction with traditional fishery economic models where catch‐to‐input marginal productivities are normally assumed to be constant. While allowing for nonlinearities in both catch‐to‐effort and catch‐to‐stock parameters, this paper extends the traditional single‐stock harvesting economic model by focusing on the dependence of the stationary solutions upon the nonlinear catch‐to‐stock parameter. Thus, we analyze equilibrium responses to changes in this parameter, which in turn may be triggered either by climatic or technological change. Given the focus in this study on the case of small pelagic fish, the analysis considers positive but small valu...