Testing for Relative Performance between Seasons in a Fishery

Abstract

The relative performance between seasons in a fishery is tested empirically. In particular, the importance of a stochastic environment-what may be denoted as fishing luck in a fishery-is established by applying Dickey-Fuller unit-root tests for the efficiency scores of vessels between seasons. More specifically we test whether the performance of individual vessels can be characterized as random or not; i.e., given good performance in one period, is it possible to also expect good performance in the next (a so-called "highliner"), or is performance due to the stochastic environment (fishing luck).