Search

This paper reviews the impact of articles published in the Marine Resource Economics (MRE) and within the field of fisheries economics in general over the period 1954-2004. Specific attention is given to the years 1984-2004, which is the period that MRE has been published. The degree of influence is assessed using citation analysis. I present the most cited papers in MRE, the top ten all time cited fisheries economics papers, and the most cited papers during each decade over the last 30 years. By analysing the trend of recently published papers, I can assess which ones are projected to be most influential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effect of positive marginal monitoring and enforcement costs, 'policing cost,' on the optimal exploitation of a fishery under the management of a marine protected area. It is shown that with positive marginal policing cost, the objective of maximum economic yield is no longer optimal, and that some dissipation of economic rent is socially optimal. The relevance of environmental education, the efficacy of policing, and the weightiness of punishments to optimal rent dissipation is discussed. Relevance of the model to other fisheries institutions is claimed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tuna resources of the Western and Central Pacific are the world's largest and most valuable fisheries of their type and are of significant economic importance to the Pacific island countries through whose waters they migrate. Two major concerns exist with the current governance of this fishery. First, Pacific island countries receive only a small share of the resource rents from the tuna fisheries. Second, the current management structure of the fisheries will not ensure the long-term sustainability of the resources. This paper derives a model to show that the sustainability of the resource can be improved when a single policymaker acts as Stackelberg leader and sets a tax, or an equivalent quantity instrument, to maximize rents from the resource. A practical institutional mechanism is presented that mimics the model's rent maximization outcome and that offers substantial benefits to both Pacific island countries and distant water fishing nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of how management response to pollution in a fishery affects the incidence of economic damages. We develop a spatially explicit bioeconomic model which is used to examine the effects of an acute pollution event. Two scenarios are considered, both involving a prohibition on shellfish harvesting in the area affected by pollution, but distinguished according to the freedom given to vessels to move out of the affected area. The model suggests that closing an area to fishing may have widespread economic repercussions if it is linked biologically or technically with others. The decision to allow or disallow boats to move from an affected area is shown to make a crucial difference in the level and variability of profits in the fishery system as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the optimal management of the Northern Atlantic bluefin tuna, both eastern and western stocks. The analysis is based on a deterministic multi-gear and age-structured bioeconomic model. In order to assess the importance of the gear structure in this fishery, the model is optimized in two scenarios. In the first, the strategies are restricted to the gear mix of the base year, whereas in the second, the optimal gear mix is estimated. For both scenarios, optimal constant strategies are determined. The corresponding optimal use is then compared with an open-access scenario. Also, optimal non-constant strategies are explored. As expected, the gear structure of the fishery proved to be highly relevant in the optimal payoffs. In particular, the unrestricted strategies yield rents substantially higher than the restricted ones. Also, the optimal management of the bluefin tuna fishery, in both the East and West Atlantic, would imply significant reallocation of the gear shares. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taxing pure rents is usually considered the least distortionary method for raising revenues. In the literature on fishery economics, the term "rent" is regularly employed, suggesting that pure rents exist in that sector. Indeed, with the recent development of individual transferable quotas, the resulting market value of quota has been treated as reflecting pure resource rents. In this paper, the view that the market value of quota represents a pure rent that can be readily extracted in a nondistortionary manner by the taxing authority is challenged because that argument ignores both economic incentives and political realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]