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

A survey of existing limited entry programs found that (1) the
restrictiveness of the program is correlated to its economic success, (2) an
inverse relationship exists between the complexity of a fishery and the
success of management, ceteris paribus, (3) the social and political
environment affects the success of limited entry plans, (4) limited entry has
generated economic benefits more often by reducing short run externalities
than by eliminating long run stock externalities, (5) no evidence exists that
weak limited entry plans evolve into strong, successful plans, (6) the rents
created by limited entry are often politically problematic, and (7) the rights
under restricted access have proven to be quite different from the terrestrial
property rights. Also, management costs are an important component of the
social costs of managing a fishery.
Townsend, Ralph E. (1995).
Policy, 19(2)153-158.
Transferable Dynamic Stock Rights. Marine
Individual transferable quotas (ITQs), while solving many short run
externalities, provide limited incentives for individual fishers to conserve
the resource. All decisions that determine harvests are made by the
government, and the shares of future harvests that are allocated to any
particular fisher are not affected by that fisher s actions. For example,
there is no incentive for the individual fisher to avoid catches of smaller
fish. In fact, the incentives for discarding and high grading may be worse
under ITQs than under other forms of management. This analysis proposes a
transferable dynamic stock right (TDSR), under which rights are allocated to
fishers as life cycle shares of each year class that can be harvested. Year
class allocations would change each year to reflect catches, growth and
natural mortality. Allocations of newly recruited fish would be in proportion
to the share of the rights to the breeding stock held by each fisher. Under
TDSRs, the fisher would internalize the economic decision about whether to
catch a given year class as small fish or as a larger tonnage of large fish.
TDSRs provide the fisher with incentives to harvest in ways that maximize the
value of the catch from a given year class.
Townsend, Ralph E. (1997). Peer Review of the Economics of the Management
Strategies for Red Snapper in the Gulf of Mexico. Draft report for U.S.
Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Economics, University
of Maine, Orono, ME, September, 28 pp.
This paper is a peer review of the appropriateness of management
measures in the fishery management plan for red snapper in the gulf of Mexico
for conserving and managing the resource and a consideration of the cost and
benefits of all reasonable alternatives to an individual fishing quota program
for the red snpapper resource.
Townsend, Ralph E. and Samuel G. Pooley (1994). "Comprehensive Property
Rights: Fishery Trusts." C.M. 1994/T:6, Theme Session on
Improving the Link Between Fisheries Science and Management:
Biological, Social, and Economic Considerations, International
Council for the Exploration of the Sea, 82 nd Statutory Meeting,
St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, September, 9 pp.
A true property rights scheme, a fishery trust, is proposed. A fishery
trust is a corporation that has comprehensive management authority. The
fishery trust is owned through corporate ownership rules. Owner shares in the
trust are distributed initially to some group, who then vote those shares to
determine the fishery governance structure. Shares are freely transferable.
The responsibility of the trust would be comprehensive, including
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