annotated bibliography of fisheries economics literature - Office of ...

Hannesson, Rognvaldur (1985). "Inefficiency Through Government
Regulations: The Case of Norway s Fishery Policy." Marine
Resource Economics, 2(2):115-141.
The fishery is a classic example of market failure. Government
intervention does not necessarily correct this, but may instead seek
economically inefficient solutions, because of either a deliberate trade off
between efficiency and equity or political expediency. Norway s fishery
policy is seen as a case in point. Its stated objectives put a low priority
on economic efficiency, while various objectives based on equity are put in
the foreground. The result is that the contribution of Norway s fisheries to
the national income is slight. Norway s fishery policy consists of two
largely uncoordinated parts, one concerned with maintaining fishermen s
incomes and the other with managing fish stocks.
Since the introduction of the 200 mile limit, most fish stocks exploited
by Norway have been managed by total allowable catches (TACs). While this has
prevented the depletion of fish stocks, the regulations introduced to enforce
the TACs have been an economic failure. The setting of TACs has in some cases
revealed a willingness to attain solutions expedient in the short term at the
expense of long term benefits.
Hannesson, Rognvaldur (1986). "The Effect of the Discount Rate on the
Optimal Exploitation of Renewable Resources." Marine Resource
Economics, 3(4):319-329.
In a recent paper, Farzin (1984) has shown that the impact of the
discount rate on the optimal rate of depletion of an exhaustible resource is
ambiguous. Since Clark s (1973) paper on the extinction of animal species, it
has been recognized that a higher discount rate increases the optimal rate of
exploitation and increases the likelihood of extinction, but ignores the
capital cost implication of a higher discount rate; the effect discussed by
Farzin. In this paper, the effect of the discount rate on the optimal rate of
exploitation and standing stock of a renewable resource such as fish is
examined. This effect is ambiguous with the ambiguity depending on the dual
role of the discount rate. On the one hand, the discount rate expresses a
required rate of return on a growing asset. For a renewable resource with a
concave growth function, a higher rate of discount implies a smaller standing
stock. Ont the other hand, the discount rate expresses the opportunity cost
of capital to be invested in harvesting equipment. A higher discount rate
thus means more costly harvesting, which in turn implies a less intensive
optimal harvesting and a larger standing stock.
Hannesson, Rognvaldur (1987). "Optimal Catch Capacity and Fishing
Effort in Deterministic and Stochastic Fishery Models." Fisheries
Research, 5:1-21.
This paper is a survey of fisheries economics aimed mainly at fisheries
biologists. The paper begins by reviewing the static theory, which
established two major results. (I) Free access leads to over-exploitation, and
(ii) the optimal rate of exploitation is less than the maximum sustainable
yield. The latter could be regarded as an antithesis to the biological
doctrine that fish stocks should be managed to give maximum sustainable yield
(MSY).
Dynamic theory, which is considered next, showed that the optimal rate
of exploitation could be either less or greater than the MSY rate. In
particular, a higher discount rate was shown to imply a higher rate of
exploitation. This, however, ignores the role of capital invested in the
harvesting sector. Once it is recognized that a higher discount rate implies
a higher required rate of return on capital, the impact of the discount rate
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