PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS AND CRISES IN WORLD FISHERIES: TURNING THE TIDE?

This paper addresses the crises in the world's fisheries involving dwindling stocks, overcapitalization, and jurisdiction disputes from a property rights perspective. In particular, it examines the causes of the problems fishers face and explores the potential of privatizing the right to catch fish as a means to address the crises. The analysis assesses experiences of private harvesting rights with reference to monitoring and enforcement, allocating rights, economic benefits, adjustments in the fishery, and resource rents. It also examines issues such as fluctuating fish stocks, straddling stocks and high seas fisheries, and the endemic poverty of many artisanal fisheries in the context of current fisheries practice.     

NORTH PACIFIC FISHERIES ENVIRONMENT: INTERNATIONAL ISSUES

The extension of economic jurisdiction to 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zones or Fishing Limits enabled coastal and island nations to add vast wealth to their exclusively owned natural resource portfolios. Simultaneously, the rights of nations to distant water fisheries were, at best, reduced to privileges. The motives for enclosure were economic, political, and strategic. However, simple economic theory suggests certain potential outcomes. First, if fishery stocks remained constant, restrictions and charges would make fishing in foreign zones relatively more costly, fishing in the remaining high seas less costly, and fishing in the domestic zone possibly less costly. Relative costs also may favor exploitation of coastal and fresh water regions for aquaculture. Second, because stocks do not remain constant, depletion in some areas will alter relative costs. Investments in conservation will be limited to claimed areas, where investors capture the benefits. Third, wherever maritime claims overlap or otherwise are unsettled, international tension will mount. The analysis here demonstrates that these expectations have become reality in the North Pacific.     

北极渔业治理的研究综述

气候变暖下的北极渔业逐渐引起国际关注,而技术进步使人类进入北极成为可能,发展北极渔业成为缓解全球海洋渔业资源危机的可行方式。北极拥有丰富的渔业资源,但北极的生态环境极为脆弱,如何有序发展北极渔业、实现北极渔业的有效治理是当前国际社会议论的热点。运用文献综述法,对北极渔业资源相关研究进行归纳,从现有法律制度、管理组织、影响北极渔业治理的主要因素方面总结出北极的渔业治理与一般海洋渔业治理的不同之处,并对未来北极可行的渔业治理模式进行展望。     

海岛旅游与海洋渔业的融合与绩效研究——以大连市长海县为例

于大连市长海县数据,构建海洋渔业与旅游业耦合协调评价指标体系,通过熵值法确定指标权重;运用耦合协调度模型测度2008-2017年间长海县海洋渔业与旅游业之间的融合度并分析其融合水平;基于SCP分析框架,运用OLS回归方法分析探讨长海县海洋渔业与旅游业的融合对海洋渔业绩效的影响;根据产业融合相关理论,总结分析海岛旅游与海洋渔业之间的相互影响因素及融合机制。研究结果表明：2008-2017年间,长海县旅游业发展速度较快,海洋渔业发展较为平缓,两大产业长期处于高关联状态,融合度呈上升趋势且已达到中级协调水平;长海县海洋渔业市场结构水平与市场开放度对其绩效未产生显著影响。产业融合度、天气程度、所有权结构与渔业绩效呈正相关关系,表现出较强的促进作用;长海县海洋渔业与旅游业之间存在积极的相互作用,其内部系统融合潜力大,外部推动力强。     

渔业资源可持续利用的对策研究

渔业资源是自然资源的重要组成部分。70年代以来,世界上一些传统的渔业资源出现了衰退,渔业的可持续发展受到了严重的挑战。本文从可持续发展的角度出发,根据渔业资源的特性,分析了渔业资源衰退的原因和本质。指出资源的有限性与需求量增加的矛盾、资源的共享性、资源产权的虚置、资源的无偿使用以及资源的负外部性是渔业资源衰退的主要原因。为确保渔业资源的可持续利用,本文提出了确立自然资源具有价值的观念、对渔业资源实行资产化管理、实现共享资源的产权转化、建立渔业资源产业、积极开展国际或区域间的合作、建立渔业资源的核算体系等建设性的措施。     

Dissertation abstract: The experimental analysis of the political economics of fisheries governance

This dissertation focuses on the political economy of fisheries governance. The study develops a formal model of fisheries governance by combining the features of the common pool fishery and the political institution of lobbying; designs a laboratory fishery governance institution and conducts economic experiments to test the hypotheses derived from the formal model. Specifically, the study analyzes how fishing firms invest in efforts to influence fishery regulation and management through voluntary contribution lobbying. The study also analyses and compares contribution and effort behavior in the lobbying and the CPR using data from economic experiments. The results indicate that lobbying to change suboptimal fishery regulations was significantly below the subgame perfect equilibrium prediction and contributions to raise the cap were significantly different than contributions to lower the cap toward the social optimum. Study results show that subjects successfully lobbied to raise inefficiently low fishing quotas, but were unable to lobby to reduce inefficiently high fishing quotas. Detailed analysis of subjects’ contribution and effort behavior suggest that despite the interesting benefit-cost duality between pure public goods and CPRs, the pattern of cooperative behavior in these two social dilemma situations was different and the level of cooperation in the voluntary contribution lobbying experiment was lower than those reported in other public goods experiments. To provide external validity to these experimental findings, the study further analyzes and compares lobbying expenditures in the fishery sector with those in other natural resource industries using field data from the United States. A comparison of actual lobbying expenditures as percentage of valued added shows that lobbying effort in the U.S fishery sector is not significantly different than those in other natural resource industries such as mining and electric utility industries, but the pattern of lobbying is different. Whereas fishing firms lobby through associations or pressure groups, firms in other natural resource industries lobby unilaterally. This observation suggests that differences in industrial structure and incentives influence the pattern of lobbying and the lobbying behavior of firms across industries. The theoretical predictions derived from the formal model of fisheries governance are consistent with our experimental findings and with the field data on lobbying in the US fisheries sector. These findings suggest that heterogeneity drives rent-seeking activities in the US fisheries sector and that fishing firms attempt to circumvent political collective action problems by forming and lobbying through associations of stakeholders with relatively homogenous policy preferences. JEL Classification D22, D72, D78, H41 Advisor: Prof. Jon G. Sutinen     

Optimal Harvesting of an Age-Structured Schooling Fishery

Biologists have criticized traditional biomass models in fishery economics for being oversimplified. Biological stock assessment models are more sophisticated with regard to biological content, but rarely account for economic objectives. This study includes a full age-structured population model for studying schooling fisheries and extends the delayed difference approach used in earlier studies. We take the total harvest as the choice variable, resulting in a simple analytical structure. The model produces optimal steady states that may be higher or lower compared to the delayed-difference formulation. The model is applied to the Baltic sprat fishery. Both ecological and harvesting cost data support specifying Baltic sprat as a schooling fishery. Given nonlinear harvesting costs, the optimal solution is a path toward a steady state with smooth annual harvest and population age structure. Sensitivity analysis shows that the optimal solution is highly dependent on the population level of the sprat’s main predator Baltic cod. A linear cost function and an interest rate below 9 % imply pulse fishing instead of smooth continuous harvesting. Given nonlinear harvesting cost, the optimal steady state yield is rather insensitive to changes in the interest rate. However, under a high cod scenario, interest rates of 10 % or higher implies that no optimal steady state exists.     

International Management Strategies for a Straddling Fish Stock: A Bio-Economic Simulation Model of the Norwegian Spring-Spawning Herring Fishery

In this paper, a three-country dynamic bio-economic simulation model is presented for the spring-spawning herring fishery. The international spring-spawning herring fishery, based on potentially one of the most valuable fish stocks in the world, is currently recovering from a severe depletion of the stock and subsequent harvesting moratorium. Management of the herring fishery is complicated by its multi-nation exploitation, due to the highly migratory behaviour of the species moving between several coastal state zones (exclusive economic zones, EEZs) and the high seas (Ocean Loop). Based on extensive work invested on analysing both the biology of the herring stock and the fisheries economics around its exploitation we study here the profiles of different multi-agent management schemes, simulating catch levels, stock size and profit potentials of alternative management strategies. The stock dynamics are described by a linear discrete-time age-structured population model and the economics are presented by a rent maximising model with constant price of herring catch and different costs of harvesting and efficiency levels for the different national fleets. The simulations, carried out over several decades, show that the benefits of international co-operation far exceed the returns of a competitive open access fishery.JEL Classifications: C7, C15, Q22     

A Bioeconomic Analysis of the Northern Baltic Salmon Fishery: Coexistence versus Exclusion of Competing Sequential Fisheries

We develop a bioeconomic model of the northern Balticsalmon fishery that takes into account thesimultaneous harvest of wild and reared salmon. Weassess the optimal harvest allocation between thecommercial offshore, inshore, and estuary fisheries,and the recreational river fishery that sequentiallyharvest the salmon stock. We restrict the solution tospawning stocks sufficient to preserve the wildsalmon. Empirical results suggest closure of theoffshore and inshore fisheries. Optimal managementenhances the wild stock, and results in substantialeconomic gains to the fishery. Current fisheryregulation improves the performance of the fisheryover open access, but fails to utilize the fullproductive potential of the resource.     

Optimal Management Under Institutional Constraints: Determining a Total Allowable Catch for Different Fleet Segments in the Northeast Arctic Cod Fishery

Many real world fisheries have an individual vessel quota system with restrictions on transferability of quota or entrance of new vessels into the fishery. While the standard economic reasoning is that these institutional constraints lead to welfare losses, the size of those losses and optimal second-best policies are usually unknown. We develop a dynamic bioeconomic model, in which a scientific body provides an optimal TAC given restrictions on (i) transferability between vessel segments and (ii) entrance of new vessels. Further, we also quantify welfare losses arising from not maximizing economic welfare, but physical yield—which is actually the case in many fisheries. We apply the model to the Northeast Arctic cod fishery, and estimate not only the cost and harvesting functions of the various vessel types, but also the parameters of the biological model as well as those of the demand function. This allows us to determine optimal second-best policies and quantify corresponding welfare effects for our case study fishery.     

Choice sets for spatial discrete choice models in data rich environments

Failure to properly specify an agent's choice set in discrete choice models will generate biased parameter estimates resulting in inaccurate behavioral predictions as well as biased estimates of policy relevant metrics. We propose a method of constructing choice sets by sampling from specific points in space to model agent behavior when choice alternatives are unknown to the researcher, potentially infinite, and differ according to spatial and temporal factors. Using Monte Carlo analysis we compare the performance of this point-based sampling method to the commonly used approach of spatially aggregating choice alternatives. We then apply these alternative approaches to modelling location choice in the Pacific groundfish trawl fishery which has a complex spatial choice structure. Both the Monte Carlo and application results provide considerable support for the efficacy of the point-based approaches.     

Spatial regulations and endogenous consideration sets in fisheries

The implementation of spatial regulations has become a mainstay in fisheries management. These regulations have generated a sizable economics literature focused on the spatial behavior of fishermen. Fundamental to these studies is the consideration set (spatial alternatives) assumed by the researcher to be possessed by the decision agent. Often times this consideration set is assumed to be the entire spatial extent of the fishery. This research proposes the use of finite mixture modeling to endogenously estimate the formation of consideration sets and the method is applied to a unique spatial decision environment, the Atka mackerel fishery in the Aleutian Islands. Consideration sets are modeled using different macro-definitions of spatial regions to focus the micro-level spatial decision making within the fishery and to investigate the sensitivity of the results to alternative macro-level spatial definitions. Results illustrate the biases associated with traditional consideration set assumptions by estimating fishermen's valuations for different high-value sites within the Aleutian Islands under alternative consideration set assumptions. Furthermore, our results demonstrate how a model that assumes some structure on potential consideration sets reduces the dimensionality problems associated with other endogenous approaches to choice set definition.     

鱼群洄游预测与生态经济问题研究

鱼群洄游预测研究对于渔业资源的可持续开发和利用是十分重要的。文章建立了基于RBF神经网络的鱼群洄游预测模型。研究结果表明,所提出的神经网络模型对于改进鱼群洄游的预测精度十分有效。渔业资源的可持续发展需要广泛、多领域的相互协作,并且需要自然科学与社会科学以及管理策略的相互结合。渔业生态经济的核心问题是处理好渔业经济发展与渔业生态保护的问题。     

HABITAT–FISHERY LINKAGES AND MANGROVE LOSS IN THAILAND

The article develops a dynamic model of habitat–fishery linkage in which the habitat is being converted. The basic model is applied to a case study of the impacts of mangrove deforestation on the artisanal marine demersal and shellfish fisheries in Thailand. The comparative static effects of a change in mangrove area on the long-run equilibrium level of effort and fish stocks, as well as on the resulting market harvesting supply of the fishery, are determined. By estimating parameters through pooled timE-series and cross-sectional data over the 1983–96 period for the five coastal zones along the Gulf of Thailand and Andaman Sea, the welfare impacts of mangrove deforestation are estimated. Mangrove conversion is expected to be a function of the return to shrimp farming and the input costs to farming shrimp, plus exogenous economic factors. The resulting aggregate reduced-form level of mangrove clearing by all farmers in coastal areas is empirically estimated across the five coastal zones in Thailand over 1983–96. The policy implications of the findings are discussed with respect to Thailand and the modeling of habitat–fishery linkages.     

ITQ’s in Chile: Measuring the Economic Benefits of Reform

In 2001 an individual (operationally transferable) quota system was introduced for all the most important industrial fisheries in Chile. This system was put in place after years of declining stocks and over investment. In this paper we describe this reform and estimate related allocative efficiency benefits for the most important industrial fishery in the country, the southern pelagic fishery. Benefits were estimated using a bioeconomic model estimated using data for the 1985–2004 period. The estimated model was then used to generate simulated scenarios of the evolution of this fishery in a 20 year horizon with and without the ITQ system in place. The benefits of the reform can then be estimated by comparing the fishery’s costs in the scenarios with and without ITQs. This approach allows benefits to be estimated using more realistic counterfactual scenarios than just comparing the fishery before and after the reform. Estimated discounted net benefits reach US $166 million in the period 2001–2020. Fleet size fell from 149 active boats in 2000 to 57 in 2004 as a direct consequence of the reform. Among the interesting features of the Chilean experience is the way the political economy of the reform was facilitated by the prior introduction of de facto individual quotas within the framework of fishery experimental activities. When the authorities closed the southern pelagic fishery because of biological problems between 1997 and 2000, they organized ‘experimental’ fishing expeditions in which participant boats were given the right to fish a certain amount of resources per expedition. This pseudo quota system allowed fishermen to experience directly the benefits of individual quotas and that was instrumental to the political agreement leading to the reform. It is important to note that the Chilean southern industrial pelagic fishery has average catches of over 1.4 million tons a year, making it one of the largest fisheries in the world to be regulated by individual quotas.     

Assessing fishers' empowerment in inland openwater fisheries in Bangladesh

The Community Based Fisheries Management (CBFM) approach has made a significant contribution towards improvement of fishers' empowerment of inland openwater fisheries in Bangladesh aiming to manage their resources efficiently. This arrangement introduced CBFM approaches named fisher-led, community-led and women-led approach. A wider range of local institutional arrangements as community based organizations (CBOs) have been established through participatory process with legal entity. Now, the CBOs as local institutions and fishers are more empowered in participation of fishery management under co-management arrangement. The study reveals that there is still lack of institutional arrangement to be achieved at optimum level. This paper presents and assesses the empowerment status of the fisher communities in inland openwater fisheries under co-management arrangement in Bangladesh through Factor analysis and regression model. This study might have policy implication to replicate the community based fishery management approach to promote empowerment for better management.     

Valuing Mangrove-Fishery Linkages – A Case Study of Campeche, Mexico

This paper explores the value of mangrove systems as a breeding and nursery habitat for off-shore fisheries, focusing on mangrove-shrimp production linkages in Campeche State, Mexico. We develop an open access fishery model to account explicitly for the effect of mangrove area on carrying capacity and thus production. From the long-run equilibrium conditions of the model we are able to establish the key parameters determining the comparative static effects of a change in mangrove area on this equilibrium. We then estimate empirically the effects of changes in mangrove area in the Laguna de Terminos on the production and value of shrimp harvests in Campeche over 1980–90. Our findings suggest that mangroves are an important and essential input into the Campeche shrimp fishery, but that the low levels of deforestation between 1980 and 1990 mean that the resulting losses to the shrimp fishery are still comparatively small. Over-exploitation of the fishery due to open access conditions remains the more pervasive threat, and without better management any long-run benefits of protecting mangrove habitat are likely to be dissipated.     

略论渔业互助保险制度的建构

进行渔村建设为渔民提供完善的渔业保险是社会主义新农村建设在渔区的重要内容。在分析我国目前渔业保险模式的基础上,重点分析了渔业互助保险模式的基础性地位及存在的困境及原因,提出了建构我国渔业互助保险的可行性建议。     

THE VALUE OF IN‐STREAM WATER TEMPERATURE FORECASTS FOR FISHERIES MANAGEMENT

Water temperature is an important factor affecting aquatic life within the stream environment. Cold water species, such as salmonids, are particularly susceptible to elevated water temperatures. This paper examines the economic value of short‐term water temperature forecasts for salmonid management. Forecasts may have economic value if they allow the water resource manager to make better water allocation decisions. This study considers two applications: water releases for management of Chinook salmon in the Klamath River and leasing water from agriculture for management of steelhead trout in the John Day River. We incorporate biophysical models and water temperature distribution data into a Bayesian framework to simulate changes in fish populations and the corresponding benefit from recreational fishing and opportunity cost of water under different temperature forecast accuracies. Simulation results indicate that use of the forecasts results in increased fish production and that marginal costs decline and net benefits increase as forecast accuracy increases, suggesting that provision and use of such stream temperature forecasts would have value to society. (JEL Q22, Q25, Q28, Q50)     

A Bioeconomic Analysis of Marine Reserves for Paua (Abalone) Management at Stewart Island,New Zealand

Traditional fisheries management relies on the imposition of gear and/or effort restrictions. In spite of much experience with such techniques, the danger of fishery collapse is ever present. Biologists have advocated an alternative strategy, the establishment of marine reserves. However, it is possible that the benefits of marine reserve creation can be overstated if economic behaviour is ignored. In spite of being managed under a system of transferable quotas, the Stewart Island paua (abalone) fishery has been in decline for some time. We develop an integrated economic and biological model of this fishery and use it to predict biomass levels in a number of scenarios, including the imposition of a network of no-take areas. We identify circumstances under which the marine reserve solution outperforms traditional management techniques. We show that the benefit of a marine reserve is highest when a fishery is heavily exploited and when accounting for stochastic recruitment.