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We explore optimal harvest conditions for Nunatsiavut's Arctic charr, a data-deficient yet economically and culturally important fishery for Labrador Inuit. In the past, arbitrarily set quotas in the absence of data on science and climate shifts have led to sustainability concerns. The fishery, adhering to conservation principles, continues at low intensity today, so as to support local employment and maintain sociocultural values, despite its low economic viability. Using the only available data for Nain's commercial fishery, we estimate intrinsic growth, catchability, and carrying capacity, which we then use in a bioeconomic model to estimate maximum economic yield. Results indicate that foregone commercial harvests are 75%–93% below optimal, before accounting for subsistence harvest. Improved understanding of the conditions under which subsistence and commercial fishing coexist alongside more investments in data collection to address scientific uncertainty can help provide clearer management guidance to meet harvest needs of both sectors and allow for better policies and governance of the fishery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have used theoretical general equilibrium or empirical computable general equilibrium models to analyze the economic and welfare effects of fishery rationalization, adopting a simplistic assumption regarding factor mobility. This study relaxes the simplistic assumption and considers more possibilities of mobility when assessing the effects of rationalization using a computable general equilibrium model for the Gulf of Alaska groundfish trawl fishery. Results demonstrate that the effects of rationalization vary significantly across different factor mobility assumptions, suggesting that the effects computed based on the simplistic assumption could mislead fishery managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bioeconomic modeling and seafood market analysis both have rich intellectual traditions that have contributed insights to understanding the economics of aquatic foods. This paper argues that these traditions, which developed mostly in parallel, should be combined more purposefully to understand management problems in fisheries and aquaculture. First, modeling the feedback between economic incentives and biological mechanisms is essential for avoiding management failure, and prices provide important incentives. Second, the form of management affects opportunities to generate value, influencing patterns of exploitation and the types of products that come from fishery resources. Third, price incentives in fisheries and responses to management depend on market context, including competition with aquaculture. By combining these insights with a modern empirical focus on counterfactuals, including both reduced-form and structural modeling approaches to causal inference, economists can inform policy and help to deliver a wide range of values from the production and consumption of aquatic foods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adoption of individual harvesting rights, such as IQs, has substantially improved the economics of numerous fisheries around the world. Unfortunately, many developing nations cannot employ these management systems because they lack the ability to enforce them. This paper argues that in many of these fisheries, properly designed community rights-based management regimes (CFMRs) will both greatly simplify the enforcement problem and create conditions conducive to economically efficient fisheries. The key features of such a CFMR for Lake Victoria fisheries are outlined and its workings explained. The essence of the system is the allocation of strong harvesting rights, similar to IQs, to the lake's fishing communities combined with total allowable catch (TAC) limits for the entire lake. The net economic benefits of a project to design, install, and operate this CFMR are estimated. While the estimated net benefits are highly positive, they are much smaller than the attainable net economic surplus obtainable from the fishing activity only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper chronicles my fisheries compliance and enforcement research during the past 40 years. My colleagues and I at the University of Rhode Island began researching fisheries law enforcement issues around 1980 because of the high degree of noncompliance in fisheries managed by the New England Fisheries Management Council. We collected data and demonstrated that the pure deterrence model does not explain fisheries compliance behavior well. This set us on a course to develop an enriched model of compliance behavion The formal enriched model accounts for tangible and intangible motivations influencing individuals' compliance decisions, resulting in better explanations of the evidence than the pure deterrence model. The model also provides practical and superior policy prescriptions. Although the enriched model is superior to the basic pure deterrence model, much research remains to be done on explaining compliance behavior and crafting more efficient and effective compliance and regulatory programs in fisheries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rights-based management of fishery resources theoretically allows firms to minimize the cost of extraction without the threat that other harvesters will take their allocations, but added flexibility also allows firms to exploit revenue margins such that firms balance potential revenuegains with potential cost savings. Using two approaches, difference-in-differences with an index of seafood prices and synthetic control, we test for revenue gains in 39 US fisheries that adopted market-based regulations and find mixed evidence of price increases. Species with price increases tend to have viable fresh markets or other features that discourage gluts, whereas species with price decreases plausibly have more to gain on thecost side or are part of a multispecies complex with a higher-value species experiencing a price increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is important to incorporate fisher motivations and behavior into fisheries management models. Incorrect behavioral assumptions may yield ineffective incentives or interventions or even produce unintended consequences. To understand fisher behavior in a developing country, we surveyed 93 Indonesian snapper fishers. Results suggest they consider competing aspects such as income, personal reputation, and sociocultural norms when deciding where and what to fish; they update beliefs about location, bountifulness, and catchability of target fish stocks through direct observations, inferences over geographical similarities, and social interactions with other fishers, and they evaluate satisfaction economically as well as socially. Information sharing and social knowledge are likely port-specific, representing local sociocultural norms rather than being related to vessel size, target catch, or other demographics. The prevalence of information sharing and imitation patterns suggests that fisher decision-making in Indonesian snapper fisheries has a significant sociocultural component. We discuss implications for fisheries management models and for policy decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the use of convex taxation as an instrument to regulate fisheries, comparing it with linear taxation with regards to economic yields and the risk of resource depletion. Convex taxation is shown to be central in studies with static models but has rarely been explored in the context of dynamic fisheries. Literature shows that a linear tax regime is superior to quantity regulation when the stock estimate is uncertain in terms of economic gains and its ability to prevent resource extinction. Furthermore, when cost uncertainty is involved, a strictly convex tax on landings can prove even more efficient. A numerical example with a single-species demersal fishery having both ecological and economic uncertainty demonstrates the gain in value of moving from a linear to a strictly convex tax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commercial fishers are constantly exposed to many risk factors, making it a dangerous occupation. Fisheries management that limits access and catches can give rise to well-known stock and rule-of-capture externalities known as the "race to fish." This market failure dissipates rents and can lead fishers to take on additional risks such as fishing in poor weather, overloading vessels, or delaying maintenance to outcompete others. Rights-based management is expected to reduce the incentives to take on additional risk. Using a large dataset of fishers from around the United States, we empirically estimate the effects of individual fishing quota (IFQ) programs on one important risk factor: the decision to fish in poor weather. We find that risk-taking behavior generally decreases under IFQs, but the magnitude of the shift differs by fishery, and we explore potential drivers of these differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a spatially explicit framework with low/middle-income country coastal characteristics, we explore whether aspatial policies augment the impact of marine protected areas (MPAs) and identify when MPAs create income burdens on communities. When MPAs are small and budget-constrained, they cannot resolve all of the marinescape's open-access issues, but they can create win-win opportunities for ecological and economic goals at lower levels of enforcement. Aspatial policies—taxes, gear restrictions, license restrictions, and livelihood programs—improve the MPA's ability to generate ecological gains, and licenses and livelihood policies can mitigate MPA-induced income burdens. Managers can use MPA location and enforcement level, in conjunction with the MPA's impact on fish dispersal, to induce exit from fishing and to direct the spatial leakage of effort. Our framework provides further insights for conservation-development policy in coastal settings, and we explore stylized examples in Costa Rica and Tanzania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introduction to the special issue, "Economics of Marine Resources in the Global South," we address the current challenges for sustainable management of aquaculture and capture fisheries in developing and transitional countries. We note that the collective action problem remains a major challenge for capture fisheries in the Global South. While aquaculture has been a fast-moving food sector for half a century and provides disadvantaged people in the Global South with low-cost, high-quality protein, negative externalities remain an industry-wide challenge. We provide a background to aquaculture and fisheries economics relevant for the Global South, using the six articles contained in this issue as a point of departure to discuss six of the 10 targets that are formulated in connection with the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goal 14 (SDG 14): conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources. Bringing together the challenges of meeting SDG 14 and the contributions of this special issue, we discuss an agenda for future research for those interested in the economics analysis of fisheries and aquaculture relevant to the Global South context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A bioeconomic model was developed to investigate optimal exploitation strategies for the queen conch (Aliger gigas) resource in the Colombian Caribbean. Ecological and economic indicators substantially improved when the status quo management system based on sustained annual harvesting of the resource at a rate of 8% of the total exploitable biomass was replaced with a rotational harvesting scheme whereby fishing was conducted at a higher exploitation rate (30%), following a four-year closure period. Closures allowed queen conch biomass to recover and accumulate undisturbed, leading to an 11% increase in the average standing density of adult conchs and a 26% increase in the net present value of the fishery, as compared with the status quo scenario. Multiple sources of improvement associated with rotation of fishing areas were identified, such as the harvesting of larger quantities of conch meats and pearls as well as reduced fishing costs. In addition to an informed assessment of the economic potential of the fishery under rotational management, the model provides a useful benchmark to estimate the gains associated with further reductions in illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, which has brought the fishery to the brink of collapse in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas rights-based catch regulations such as individual transferable quotas (ITQs) are gaining traction as the key management instrument in many fisheries, most fisheries are additionally regulated by gear restrictions, minimum landing sizes, and similar measures that intend to protect young fish from being caught. Here we study the incentives to fish selectively in a second-best setting, where the regulator issues quotas of different types and fishers choose the size of the fish they catch. We find that if quotas are specified in terms of the number of fish, rather than biomass or weight, fishers have substantial incentives to target larger fish. Thus juvenile fish are protected without need for gear restrictions. We develop the economic principles in an analytical model and quantify results for empirical examples. We find that steady-state profits under second-best deregulated number quota management are only 0.1%–2.1% below the first-best optimum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite seafood markets becoming increasingly globalized with common price determination processes, there is increasing evidence of heterogeneity within these markets, creating differentiation opportunities and new margins that producers can optimize. In particular, an increasing number of studies using hedonic price functions show that attributes such as size, quality, and harvesting process have value. These studies primarily focus on different attributes in product space. There is also increasing evidence that social considerations in fisheries management create inefficiencies that may show up as differences between vessel groups, but this may also result in regional price differences. In this study we have detailed data on Norwegian landings of cod by region. This allows us to investigate whether the margins vary by region, indicating market heterogeneity also in the geographical dimension. While the basic attributes, and particularly size, are most important, the results indicate that attribute values do vary by region. This indicates that the margins that fishers and buyers optimize over vary geographically, possibly because of resource availability, regional market differences, or management-created constraints. It is also of interest to note that higher prices for passive gear such as longline are primarily associated with mobile oceangoing vessels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an estimate of resource rent creation and its distribution in Icelandic fisheries, which have been administered by an individual transferable quota (ITQ) management system for almost three decades. This study examined the period from 1997 to 2017. Little rent was produced in the first years; however, since 2008, rent has been significant, averaging 380 million USD per year, which is around 17% of the export value of the fishing industry. Approximately 20% of the rent went to the public due to a special fishing fee and through corporate taxes. The remainder was evenly split between those who originally acquired their fishing rights by grandfathering but have cashed in their windfall gains and traded their quotas, hereinafter referred to as quota sellers, and the companies working in the fishing industry, each receiving around 40% of the rent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevailing perspective in fisheries has been that the three pillars of sustainability—ecology, economics, and social—are incompatible due to inherent tradeoffs. That assumption is now being questioned in the literature. The primary objective of this article is to evaluate the triple-bottom line performance of key fisheries in the Faroe Islands and determine if outcomes vary between management systems. Fisheries managed with limited-access rights demonstrated systematic overfishing, generated little to no resource rent, had poor profits, remuneration was at times very poor, and employment declined. The fleets managed with harvest rights performed better overall. They were more sustainable, more profitable, generated large resource rents, remuneration was large, and employment increased. We conclude that the three pillars of sustainability are compatible and mutually reinforcing and that fleets with harvest rights are more likely to achieve good triple-bottom line results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the collective bargaining efforts of atomized fishermen with a monopsony-like buying sector. Government allocation of collective share quotas to fishermen's organizations triggered the voluntary formation of cooperative fishermen's bargaining associations, while a highly concentrated processing sector started behaving as a countervailing monopsony. This drove ex-vessel price determination into region-specific bilateral monopoly price bargaining. We estimate an empirical model of regional ex-vessel price determination, taking advantage of between-region regulatory differences to identify the differential effects on ex-vessel prices. Our model estimates the overall impact on regional ex-vessel prices from this process of institutional change. Our results show evidence of higher, policy-shift driven, ex-vessel prices at only one of the regions studied. This region had more favorable conditions for collective action and is where fishermen were able to achieve more stable, better organized fishermen's associations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the strategic exploitation of an age-structured, common-property resource, where agents target different age classes. We present the first closed form solution for the optimal harvesting of an age-structured population, and we derive closed-form solutions for the Markov-perfect Nash equilibrium, thus extending the 'second-generation fish war' literature by studying a structured resource rather than a simple biomass setting. We derive conditions under which the different age classes are subject to overfishing in the non-cooperative setting, as harvest quantities are strictly higher than in the cooperative optimum, but also characterize conditions under which some age classes may be underfished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When vessel-level data and input prices are unobserved, estimating the effect of water quality changes on fishery performance can be challenging. To address this problem, we develop a novel production function model with technical efficiency (TE) under the assumption that there are multiple groups within the fishery with different levels of TE and the allocation of fishers into these groups is unknown. The methodology is applied to the Connecticut Long Island Sound lobster fishery. Two groups of fishers were identified to operate at different TE levels (0.88 and 0.74) between 1998 and 2007. The difference in TE is primarily explained by total fishing days and the number of fishers, though environmental variables also have some impact. These findings have important implications for policies geared toward improving efficiency in fisheries and accurate assessment of the overall health of marine fisheries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A relevant question in fishery management is to what extent individual transferable quotas and effort quotas (ITQs/ITEQs) can contribute to higher efficiency and net returns as well as foster resource sustainability. To better account for factors that systematically affect efficiency of fishing companies within a complex institutional environment, two stochastic frontier semiparametric models treat unobserved heterogeneity as a finite mixture or discrete approximation to continuous parameter variation by adjusting for sample selection and latent classes, respectively. Assuming profitability-constrained, revenue-maximising strategies and based on a panel of Falkland Islands fisheries over the period 2003–14, both models suggest separate frontiers relative to revenues and limited to selection-corrected model costs. The hypothesis of frontier-enhancing effects of the new ITQ/ITEQ regime is supported for most—albeit not all—fishing companies. Based on model results, revenue efficiency gains are achievable by encouraging, when feasible, vessel ownership and larger arrangements between quota holders and joint-venture companies. Regression results of latent class production frontier models for southern hake catches similarly suggest heterogeneity across finfish vessels and widespread—though not uniform—frontier-enhancing effects of the new fishery regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The marine fishery resources in the West Coast of Peninsular Malaysia are overexploited by fishing effort by the trawlers. The encroachment of trawlers to the near-shore fishery and conflict between traditional fishers and trawlers still exists, although a licensing system was imposed by trawl fishery management. The dynamics of fishing effort with various alternative management policies was analyzed, and the proper combination of the management policies was selected in order to control overcapacity by the trawlers and provide sustainable management of the trawl fishing industry. System simulation analysis was carried out to determine effort dynamics and the performance of the industry. The results indicated that, the management policy, including the combination of reducing 50% of licenses issued in 2012 coupled with a decreasing fuel price subsidy and increasing landings charges, could be the proposed management policy for the sustainable management of Zone B trawlers in the West Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Management of the “General Category” component of the US Atlantic sea scallop (Placopecten magellanicus) fishery changed from open access with a soft, or target, catch limit, to limited access with a hard catch limit, to individual fishing quotas (IFQs) in just three years. Two differences-in-differences (DiD) models are used to examine the causal effects of management on price and revenue. A hedonic price model finds that the IFQ program had minimal direct effects on prices. A landings composition model finds that the IFQ program increased landings of the largest scallops. The Limited Access fleet, which lands most of the scallops in the region and is managed primarily with input controls, serves as a control for both models. Our policy simulation finds that IFQs increased revenues by 2.6% compared to hard catch limits. However, the IFQ program did not increase revenues relative to the regulated open-access system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a trip-level dataset to analyze the impact of a collective rights-based management system ("sectors") introduced in the New England groundfish fishery in 2010. We examine the change of a number of outcome variables, including effort, species diversity, and location diversity. We then examine whether participation in sectors led to shifts in the production frontier and/or changes in technical efficiency using stochastic frontier models. Our results suggest that participation in sectors appears to have impacted trawl vessels more than gillnet vessels, likely due to the different ways in which the effort regulations in place under the common-pool regime impacted these vessel types. In addition, sector participation appears to have an impact on behavioral responses (i.e., changes in effort and diversity of species and locations) rather than technical efficiency, despite some evidence that sector participation led to shifts in the production frontiers of both vessel types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate elasticities of demand for fish, categorized by their origin (inland capture, marine capture, and aquaculture), for poor and non-poor households in Bangladesh and analyze implications for food security and fisheries management. Demand for fish from all sources and by all households increases with income. Elasticities of demand for aquacultured and inland-captured fish are higher for poor households than non-poor. Technological progress has driven reduction in the real price of farmed fish. Effective management of all fish sources is important for food security, but increasing supply from aquaculture and inland capture fisheries will have the most significant effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study estimates the price elasticity of demand for Pacific bluefin tuna in Tsukiji Market by using an instrumental variables approach. Variability in catch by purse seine vessels and fluctuations in the auctioned volume at Tsukiji Market are used as supply shocks. This study finds an elastic demand for Pacific bluefin tuna with an estimated constant own-price elasticity of demand of -2.631. There is a growing concern for the health of the Pacific bluefin tuna stock, and management measures are being discussed. This estimation of own-price elasticity of demand for Pacific bluefin tuna can contribute to future policy evaluations. Under elastic demand, a price increase is met with more than a proportionate decrease in the quantity demanded. This may pose as a challenge to the Pacific bluefin tuna fisheries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate in commercial fishery management has evolved from whether well-defined rights are necessary for sustainability to measuring the impacts of different rights-based system designs. Most assessments are on developed world fisheries. Using a unique collection of datasets, we develop counterfactuals to evaluate the economic impacts of the Chilean jack mackerel catch share program. We investigate vessel and trip characteristics, as well as trip costs and revenues, before and after the implementation of the program. We find an increase in higher value products and associated revenue, as well as consolidation of catch on larger vessels, vessels taking longer trips, and those catching more per trip. Overall, we estimate that the program led to a measureable increase in fishing profits, mainly due to movement toward higher-value products. A back-of-the-envelope calculation results in an implied annual quota rental rate on the order of approximately 15-19%of ex-vessel prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the authors' earlier attempts to incorporate the theories of capital and investment into fisheries economics and argues that such dynamic analysis is now of immediate policy relevance. It also discusses some limitations to the earlier analysis and means of addressing them. It then goes on to point to two areas of potential future research, with the first of these being an expansion of work initiated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and others on the economics of the required massive investment in hitherto overexploited capture fishery resources, giving particular emphasis to the consequences of non-malleable human capital. The second concerns intra-EEZ management of fishery resources and the growing need for greater application of game theory to the management of such resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional empirical models of fisheries production inadequately capture the primary margins of behavior along which fishermen act, rendering themineffective for ex ante policy evaluation. We estimate a conventional production model for a fishery undergoing a transition to rights-based management and show that ex ante production data alone arrives at misleading conclusions regarding post-rationalization production possibilities--even though the technologies available to fishermen before and after rationalization were effectively unchanged. Our results emphasize the difficulty of assessing the potential impacts of a policy change on the basis of ex ante data alone. Since such data are generated under a different incentive structure than the prospective system, a purely empirical approach imposed upon a flexible functional form is likely to reflect far more about the incentives under status-quo management than the actual technological possibilities under a new policy regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recreational fisheries regulations frequently consist of possession limits, size limits, and seasonal closures that constrain the ability of recreational fishermen to catch or land fish. It is difficult to predict howthese regulations will influence angler participation and recreational fishing mortality. This research integrates a utility-theory consistent model of demand for recreational fishing trips with an age-structured stock dynamics model to provide policy relevant advice to managers of the groundfish fishery in the Northeast United States. The recreational cod and haddock regulations implemented in 2014 have high costs in terms of foregone angler welfare and minimal positive impacts on stock conditions after three years. The ability of policies that generate large amounts of discarding, like high minimum size limits, to meet conservation objectives are also found to be quite sensitive to assumptions about the recreational discard mortality rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tradable harvest rights are gradually replacing prescriptive regulations in the management of commercial fisheries. We provide evidence that this management strategy can also successfully achieve non-commercial marine conservation goals, such as limiting unintended catch (bycatch) of protected species. We examine fishers' responses to the introduction of tradable harvest rights for protected species, 'bycatch rights,' in the US West Coast groundfish fishery, finding evidence of adjustment along several margins and estimating the marginal cost of conservation. Fishers adapted to bycatch rights by changing fishing location, gear, time of day fished, and duration of fishing activity. As a result, catches of protected species fell dramatically. The nuanced nature of fishers' responses indicates that the least-cost way of achieving conservation goals can involve fine-tuned behavioral adaptations that would be difficult or impossible to achieve with command-and-control regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the relationship between quota enforcement, compliance, and capital accumulation in ITQ regulated fisheries. Overextraction and overcapacity represent two of the main fisheries management challenges, and we aim to model and analyze the two jointly. In a stylized resource model, quota violating and complying firms invest in capital, buy quotas, and choose their harvest. We show that in the short run, more capacity increases illegal extraction, while a well-functioning quota market partially alleviates this effect. We also show how tougher enforcement yields a double benefit by directly improving compliance and indirectly reducing incentives to invest in capacity, which improves future compliance. Our analysis thus contributes to the literature on market-based management of renewable resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a novel application of the essential input welfare measure to valuing sportfishing harvest. The approach was suggested 30 years ago and has only been applied two other times with market data and has never been applied in the recreation context. We model boat fuel as an essential input in the production of sportfish harvested offshore and trace the value of changes in harvest quality with shifts in the demand for boat fuel. To implement the model we generate the first estimate of the demand for sportfishing boat fuel using the infrequent-purchases model. The estimate of boat fuel price elasticity is more than six times larger than typical estimates for the household demand for automobile fuel. Our estimates of the value of fishing quality are similar to estimates using stated preference and travel cost methods, but have the advantage of being based on market purchases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maximum economic yield (MEY) can be extended along two dimensions beyond the common resource stock externality: (1) the appropriate measurement of costs and benefits and (2) extending MEY beyond the relationship between the harvest sector and the resource stock externality. Only when all economic dis- tortions are accounted for and valued by economic (shadow) prices does MEY actually represent a full economic optimum. Accounting for dynamic technical and allocative efficiency extends MEY beyond the traditional dynamic scale efficiency. When accounting for accumulated and new technology and nonmarket public good benefits from biodiversity and ecosystem services, an open question remains whether the MEY resource stock exceeds, equals, or falls short of the MSY resource stock. Without no-growth, steady-state equilibrium, adaptive management is required using non-autonomous bioeconomic models or continuous updating of autonomous ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a brief history of fisheries management and the development of the fisheries economics paradigm taking into account the distinction between fisheries management (the decision to control the amount and timing of fisheries exploitation) and fisheries regulation (the specification of the rules and procedures to control the actual taking of fish such that actual mortality is equal to the desired mortality). It is noted that the concepts from regulation analysis have been commonly adopted in real-world management practices, but this has not been the case for the concepts from fisheries management analysis. Preliminary analysis of why this is so and suggestions for how to correct it are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fishery regulations might not only affect the fleet, but also the relation between fisheries and downstream sectors on the ex-vessel market for fish products. This article estimates the price effects of management reform in the Swedish Baltic Sea cod fishery. In April 2011, as part of a reform process aimed at giving fishers more flexibility, vessels using active gear were given annual non-transferable catch quotas. We examine whether the new management system has altered the bargaining power between fishers and processors in the ex-vessel market for fish. Using a difference-in-differences estimation approach we find that post reform fishers improve their bargaining power and thus are paid a higher price. However, the price increase is small, amounting to around 2% of the pre-reform price. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the introduction of Professor Joshua Abbott of the Arizona State University as the next editor-in-chief of the journal. It offers brief description of Abbott's qualifications indicating that he is ideally suited to evaluate, guide and promote economic scholarship in oceans. It also mentions Abbott's significant contribution to the field, particularly his effort of dealing contentious social issues surrounding the formation of rights-based management in fisheries.

The economic benefits that arise following the transition to a rights-based fishery management regime accrue on both the extensive and intensive margins. This research explores the changes in fleet composition, economic performance, and coordination that occurred following the introduction of the Bering Sea Crab Rationalization Program. On the extensive margin, we estimate the relative efficiency of vessels within each fishing cooperative to look for potential arbitrage opportunities when selecting which vessels will fish the cooperative's quota allocation. On the intensive margin, we investigate the role of peer effects in facilitating the flow of information within the cooperative. The results support two hypotheses within the red king and snow crab fisheries: (1) the cooperatives which formed appear to have exploited the intra-cooperative efficiency arbitrage opportunities, and (2) an increase in landings by a fellow cooperative member tends to increase one's own landings, a positive peer effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To provide insights for artisanal recreational fisheries management, using Belize as a case study, our research addressed the following research question: What is the natural resource base in terms of the fish species, typology of users, and general management regulations comprising artisanal recreational fisheries in Belize? To answer it, a mixed method approach, which included social and biological surveys, was used. Our results indicated: (1) there is a mismatch in the very definition of "recreational fisheries" between the fishery managers and resource users; (2) current management regulates the so called "sport fishing," whereas three other recorded fisheries--reef fishing, blue fishing, and local recreational fishing--remain unregulated; (3) 26 bony fish species in the study area; and (4) the direct users (fishers) are primarily non-residents, whereas the indirect users (service providers) are residents. Our study suggests that any management plan for these fisheries should consider local complexities and stakeholders' inputs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives an overview of sustainability and management of the straddling stock fisheries for Norwegian spring spawning herring, mackerel, and blue whiting. These stocks are harvested by coastal states and distant water fishing states (DWFS). Because multiple states access these stocks, reaching agreements on management has posed challenges, and some agreements have unravelled. For the blue whiting, the fishing industry itself played a major role in facilitating an agreement. A general lesson learned is that changes in fish migrations and stock distribution may destabilize international agreements. JEL Codes: Q22, Q34, Q57, Q58. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economics literature on fisheries has focused primarily on stock externalities and, to a lesser degree, on crowding externalities. Yet for many fisheries, harvesting activities may affect the underlying biological productivity of the fish stock by impacting the forage or habitat quantity or quality. We refer to this as an 'ecosystem externality.' Ecosystem externalities may be positive as well as negative. While fishing may damage habitat in ways that reduce productivity, in some cases it may increase food availability and thereby increase productivity of the target species of a fishery. Extending the model of Smith (1968), we use three equations to characterize dynamics of a resource stock, profit-maximizing individual behavior, and vessel entry/exit. We use this simple model to show how ecosystem externalities, in conjunction with stock externalities and crowding externalities, affect system dynamics, open-access equilibria, and optimal fishery regulation implemented through a tax. JEL Code: Q22, Q57. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of a fishery is not controlled by the fisheries management system. Neither is it controlled by fisheries management measures selected under that system. These are merely words on paper. The actual control of the fishery is by enforcement of the fisheries management measures selected. In this sense, fisheries enforcement is the real fisheries management. This observation raises the question of the optimal path of fisheries enforcement over time. Given the initial state of the fishery, a time path of fisheries management measures, and a set of enforcement tools and penalty levels, what would be the optimal enforcement effort over time? This article deals with that issue. Given an efficient fisheries management system, it attempts to characterize the solution to the problem of optimal enforcement of fisheries management measures over time. Not surprisingly, it turns out that the optimal enforcement effort would normally not be constant over time and usually not produce 100% compliance. On the contrary, the optimal level of enforcement and, therefore, compliance is generally a function of the state of the fish stocks at each point in time. More specifically, it appears that optimal enforcement effort may typically be a monotonically declining function of the size of the fish stocks. The article proceeds to investigate optimal paths of other enforcement controls such as penalty levels and allowable catches (announced TACs) and their dependence on the size of the fish stocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economists are interested in the relationship between fishing effort and stock size and their impact on catch levels. The interest lies in stock elasticity, where it is thought that for pelagic fish species it is close to zero; for demersal fish stocks, closer to one. We statistically model and estimate the relationship between stock size and catch for two species, Northeast Arctic cod and saithe. In doing so we are able to recover estimates of stock elasticity but also estimates of catchability coefficients for different age classes and importantly an implicit index of fishing effort. Data on observed catch and a measure of biomass-at-age are available from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. The generated stock data are econometrically problematic, and we use an IV estimator with bootstrapping in estimation. Time-series techniques applied to panel data are used to statistically motivate the estimation, which is carried out within a two-way panel framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implementation and management of an ITQ fishery involves significant and costly administrative activities. These activities include formulating and implementing policy rules, monitoring and enforcement to deter illegal behavior, and economic and marine research. In this article we construct a model of a competitive ITQ system to analyze how the distribution of administrative costs between the public and a fishing industry can affect the equilibrium in the quota market, including equilibrium level of administrative costs, and derive results about the optimal distribution of these costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sharing of a migrating fish stock between two players is considered. Data on the Northeast Atlantic mackerel are used to model the fishery. A growth function is estimated, and random fluctuations in growth and recruitment are used to simulate the fishery. Three different migration models are considered: I) deterministic, ii) stock-dependent, and iii) purely random. With deterministic migrations, the minor player has a disproportionate bargaining strength and must be offered a relatively large share of a cooperative solution. The minor player's bargaining strength is weak if the migrations into his economic zone are stock-dependent, but strong if they are purely random. The risk of extinction is shown to be high without stock-dependent unit cost of fish, and to get a viable Nash-Cournot equilibrium the major player's share must be well above one half. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bio-economically optimal stock size of the alien invasive red king crab in the Barents Sea, representing a commercial value as well as a threat to the ecosystem and its services, is explored assuming linear as well as non-linear relationships between crab stock size and ecosystem damage. The results show that the management goal of harvesting the crab at maximum sustainable yield cannot be reconciled with the overall objective of the Barents Sea management plan of securing ecosystem structure. The importance of identifying the correct damage relationship is demonstrated by large differences in optimal stock sizes and altered sensitivity of the models to input parameters. The analysis also shows the importance of knowing the carrying capacity of the crab stock, as well as the carrying capacity of the natural ecosystem with respect to the crab. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a continuous, nonlinear, stochastic, and dynamic model for capital investment in the exploitation of a renewable resource. Both the resource stock and capital are treated as state variables. The resource owner controls fishing effort and the investment rate in an optimal way. Biological stock growth and the capital depreciation rate are stochastic in the model. We find that the stochastic resource should be managed conservatively. The capital utilization rate is found to be a nonincreasing function of stochasticity. Investment could be either higher or lower depending on the interaction between capital and the resource stock. In general, a stochastic capital depreciation rate has no strong influence on optimal management. In the long run, the optimal harvest for a stochastic resource becomes lower than the deterministic level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assess cod, herring, and sprat fisheries in the Baltic Sea under different environmental conditions using a bioeconomic model with simple predation functions. We compare the status quo fishing policy to an optimal policy under two different salinity conditions, which have a link to climate change. The fishery of these species is not at the most profitable level. If the fishing mortalities are lower, economic return will be greater in the long run. A lower fishing mortality for cod, which allows time for individuals to grow and achieve a higher economic value and reproduction potential, would result in the recovery of the cod stock. Under a high salinity level, which leads to better conditions for cod recruitment, the cod stock has a better chance to recover even without a decrease in fishing mortality. Therefore, fishery management is even more important under conditions of low salinity, which are likely to prevail in the future due to changing climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent supply shocks in the Gulf of Mexico--including hurricanes, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the seasonal appearance of a large dead zone of low oxygen water (hypoxia)--have raised concerns about the economic viability of the U.S. shrimp fishery. The ability of U.S. shrimpers to mediate supply shocks through increased prices hinges on the degree of market integration, both among shrimp of different sizes classes and between U.S. wild caught shrimp and imported farmed shrimp. We use detailed data on shrimp prices by size class and import prices to conduct a co-integration analysis of market integration in the shrimp industry. We find significant evidence of market integration, suggesting that the law of one price holds for this industry. Hence, in the face of a supply shocks, prices do not rise; instead, imports of foreign farmed fish increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We undertake a bioeconomic analysis of the aggregate traditional fisheries in the Northern and Central areas of Red Sea off the coast of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Results of our analysis using a Fox model and the Clarke-Yoshimoto-Pooley (CY&P) estimation procedure suggest that the aggregate traditional fisheries have been overfished since the early 1990s. The estimated stock size in recent years is as low as 6,400 MT, while the estimated stock size associated with the maximum economic yield (MEY) is 19,300 MT. The socially optimal level of fishing effort is about 139,000 days. Thus, the current effort level of 300,000 to 350,000 days constitutes a problem of overfishing. The estimated current total gross revenue from the traditional fisheries is Saudi Rials (SR) 147 million with zero net benefit. If total fishing effort is reduced to the socially optimal level, then we estimate gross revenue would be SR 167 million and the potential net benefit from the KSA Red Sea traditional fisheries could be as large as SR 111 million. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is potential to increase the economic returns in many fisheries by improving fisheries management. In this article, maximum and estimated current resource rents are analyzed using a standardized methodology for five case studies of fisheries with different management regimes: individual quotas (Norway), individual transferable quotas (Iceland), co-management (Denmark), vessel catch limits (Sweden), and tradable days-at-sea regulation (Faroe Islands). The Danish co-managed fishery had the highest estimated current rent, corresponding to 51% of landing value compared to a maximum rent of 62%. The Danish case was followed by the Icelandic ITQ fishery (estimated current 30%, maximum 66%), Faroese tradable days-at-sea (current 28%, maximum 55%), Swedish vessel catch limits (current 3%, maximum 74%), and Norwegian individual quotas (estimated current -22%, maximum 43%). Fishery characteristics other than management might influence the estimated resource rent, and the results are discussed in relation to biological sustainability. The method used across fisheries and countries for the estimation of the current economic rent, based on standardized opportunity costs of labor and capital, exaggerates the current positive rent for the ITQ fishery and the negative rent for the individual quota fishery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]