Quotas, Productivity and Prices: The Case of Anchovy Fishing

Gabriel Natividad ()

No 6, Working Papers from Peruvian Economic Association

Abstract: I exploit a 2009 reform that introduced individual fishing quotas (catch shares) for Peruvian anchovy – the largest fishery in the world – to assess the causal impact of production quotas on within-firm productivity and market prices. Unique features of the data allow me to create two alternative counterfactuals: (i) anchovy fishing operations in a region of the country that was mandated to implement quotas with a delay, and (ii) variation in quota allocations across ships. I find that quotas do not increase within-asset or within-firm productivity in quantities. Instead, a 200% increase in anchovy prices benefits extraction firms through higher revenues, consistent with two mechanisms enacted by individual fishing quotas: more orderly industry operations reducing excess supply and an increase in bargaining power of extraction firms with respect to fish-processing. Several market characteristics across geographies differentially affect market prices after the quota regime. Supplementary evidence on fewer operational infractions, higher product quality, and a lower banking delinquency observed during the quota regime suggests the existence of efficiency gains rather than purely rent transfers.

Date: 2014-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-bec and nep-eff
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://perueconomics.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/WP-6-2.pdf Application/pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Quotas, Productivity, and Prices: The Case of Anchovy Fishing (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:apc:wpaper:2014-006

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Peruvian Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nelson Ramírez-Rondán ().