Bio-economies of scope and the discard problem in mulitple species fisheries

Rajesh Singh () and Quinn Weninger ()

Staff General Research Papers from Iowa State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper considers the problem of multi-species fisheries management when targeting individual species is costly and at-sea discards of fish by fishermen are unobserved by the regulator. Stock conditions, ecosystem interaction, technological specification, and relative prices under which at sea discards are acute are identified. A dynamic model is developed to balance ecological interdependencies among multiple fish species, and scope economies implicit in a costly targeting technology. Three regulatory regimes, species-specific harvest quotas, landing taxes, and revenue quotas, are contrasted against a hypothetical sole owner problem. An optimal plan under all regimes precludes discarding. For both very low and very high levels of targeting costs, first best welfare is close to that achieved through any of the regulatory regimes. In general, however, landing taxes welfare dominate species-specific quota regulation; a revenue quota fares the worst.

Keywords: scope economies; multiple species fishery management; costly targeting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-env
Date: 2007-08-09
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Published in Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, July 2009, Vol. 58, No. 1, pp. 72-92.

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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:isu:genres:12839

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