Protecting Marine Biodiversity: A Comparison of Individual Habitat Quotas (IHQs) and Marine Protected Areas

Fisheries managers in the United States are required to identify and mitigate the adverse impacts of fishing activity on essential fish habitat (EFH). There are additional concerns that the viability of noncommercial species, animals that are habitat dependent and/or are themselves constituents of fishery habitat may still be threatened. We consider a cap-and-trade system for habitat conservation, individual habitat quotas for fisheries, to achieve habitat conservation and species protection goals cost effectively. Individual quotas of habitat impact units (HIUs) would be distributed to fishers with an aggregate quota set to maintain a target habitat “stock” of EFH conservation. Using a dynamic, spatially explicit fishery simulation model we explore the efficiency and cost effectiveness of an IHQ policy versus alternative marine protected area (MPA) configurations, at reducing the risk of extinguishing a habitat dependent species of unknown spatial distribution. Our findings indicate that an IHQ policy with a conservatively established habitat target is better suited to the protection of non-target species than a rotating or fixed MPA policy.Fisheries management, Individual transferable quota, ITQ, Individual habitat quota, IHQ, Essential fish habitat, EFH, Marine protected areas, MPA, Non-target species

The Impact of Interstate Highways on Land Use Conversion

Between 1945 and 2007, the United States lost 19.3 % of its agricultural land. Over the same time period, the construction of the 42,500 mile interstate highway system lowered transportation costs and opened large tracts of land for development. This paper assesses the impact of the interstate highway system on agricultural land loss in Georgia and uses the empirical estimates to simulate agricultural land loss resulting from the construction of additional interstate highways. Using a historical data set of agricultural land and interstate highway mileage, empirical estimates indicate that each additional mile of interstate highway reduces agricultural land by 468 acres. The impact of interstate highways is heterogeneous across initial level of county development. Urban counties convert 70 % more land than the full sample estimates. Simulation results show that additions to the interstate system create further loss of agricultural land. The results imply that future conservation programs need to consider how to mitigate the impact of the interstate highway system

Drive ‘Til You Qualify: Credit Quality and Household Location

A deeper understanding of the credit-sorting process is essential when considering the extent to which home foreclosures are driven by price contagion or an underlying spatial pattern of mortgage quality. Adapting household location theory, we find that credit constrained households follow “drive-\u27til-you-qualify” behavior leading to rising credit quality with distance from the CBD while unconstrained households exhibit declining credit quality. Individual level mortgage loan-to-income data for the 100 largest MSAs show credit constrained behavior either throughout the urban area or concentrated in the suburbs. Meta analysis of the credit sorting estimates identify MSA characteristics associated with each pattern

A Spatial Model of Dolphin Avoidance in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean

This paper examines the impact of dolphin-safe eco-labeling and how it fundamentally altered the spatial distribution of fishing effort and fishermen's willingness to pay to avoid dolphins. To do this, a dynamic discrete choice econometric model is applied to the Eastern Tropical Pacific tuna fishery. This econometric approach combines a dynamic programming component with the static discrete site choice model. This estimator couples the current period projected profits associated with fishing a specific site with the value of all future location choices on the cruise, assuming choices are made optimally. The key feature of this model is that it recovers behavioral parameters and solves the dynamic programming problem recursively. The dynamic site choice model reveals a markedly higher impact on producers as compared to the commonly used static model following the labeling regime. Further, in all but a few cases the common practice in dynamic choice models of setting discount factors equal to one is rejected.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Estimating Heterogeneous Primal Capacity and Capacity Utilization Measures in a Multi-Species Fishery

We use a stochastic production frontier model to investigate the presence of heterogeneous production and its impact on fleet capacity and capacity utilization in a multi-species fishery. Furthermore, we propose a new fleet capacity estimate that incorporates complete information on the stochastic differences between each vessel-specific technical efficiency distribution. Results indicate that ignoring heterogeneity in production technologies within a multi-species fishery, as well as the complete distribution of a vessel's technical efficiency score, may yield erroneous fleet-wide production profiles and estimates of capacity.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Fixed-Effect Estimation of Highly-Mobile Production Technologies

We consider fixed-effect estimation of a production function where inputs and outputs vary over time, space, and cross-sectional unit. Variability in the spatial dimension allows for time-varying individual effects, without parametric assumptions on the effects. Asymptotics along the spatial dimension provide consistency and normality of the marginal products. A finite-sample example is provided: a production function for bottom-trawler fishing vessels in the flatfish fisheries of the Bering Sea. We find significant spatial variability of output (catch) which we exploit in estimation of a harvesting function

Fixed-Effect Estimation of Highly-Mobile Production Technologies

We consider fixed-effect estimation of a production function where inputs and outputs vary over time, space, and cross-sectional unit. Variability in the spatial dimension allows for time-varying individual effects, without parametric assumptions on the effects. Asymptotics along the spatial dimension provide consistency and normality of the marginal products. A finite-sample example is provided: a production function for bottom-trawler fishing vessels in the flatfish fisheries of the Bering Sea. We find significant spatial variability of output (catch) which we exploit in estimation of a harvesting function

Increasing Organ Donation via Changes in the Default Choice or Allocation Rule

The supply of deceased donor organs is a limiting factor for transplantation based therapies. This research utilizes a laboratory experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of alternative public policies targeted at increasing the rate of deceased donor organ donation. The experiment includes treatments across different default choices (opt-in versus opt-out) and organ allocation rules (without versus with priority rule) inspired by the donor registration systems applied in different countries. Furthermore, the experiment includes a controlled treatment to measure the effects of a neutral versus descriptive framing of the decision task. Our results indicate that the opt-out system with priority rule generates the largest increase in organ donation relative to an opt-in only program. However, sizeable gains are achievable using either a priority rule or optout program separately, with the opt-out rule generating approximately 80% of the benefits achieved under a priority rule program

Angler Heterogeneity and the Species-Specific Demand for Marine Recreational Fishing

In this study we assess the viability of single-species recreation demand models given commonly available data sets. Using the 2000 MRFSS southeast intercept data combined with the economic add-on, we determine that the MRFSS data will support only a few species-specific recreation demand models. Considering species of management interest in the southeast, we focus on dolphin, king mackerel, red snapper and red drum. We examine single-species recreational fishing behavior using random utility models of demand. We explore mixed logit (i.e., random parameter) logit and finite mixture (i.e., latent class logit) models for dealing with angler heterogeneity. We compare these to the commonly used conditional and nested logit models in terms of the value of catching (and keeping) one additional fish. Mixed logit models illustrate that the value of catch can be highly heterogeneous and, in some cases, can include both positive and negative values. The finite mixture model generates value estimates that were some times strikingly different than conditional, nested and mixed logit models. Preference heterogeneity is significant within the MRFSS data. We find evidence that single-species models outperform multiple species models and recreational values differ. Key Words: marine recreational fishing, single-species demand, preference heterogeneity models

Estimation of Sample Selection Models with Spatial Dependence

We consider the estimation of sample selection (type II Tobit) models that exhibit spatial error dependence or spatial autoregressive errors (SAE). The method considered is motivated by a two-step strategy analogous to the popular heckit model. The first step of estimation is based on a spatial probate model following a methodology proposed by Pinkse and Slade (1998) that yields consistent estimates. The consistent estimates of the selection equation are used to estimate the inverse Mills ratio (IMR) to be included as a regressor in the estimation of the outcome equation (second step). Since the appropriate IMR turns out to depend on a parameter from the second step under SAE, we propose to estimate the two steps jointly within a generalized method of moments (GMM) framework. We explore the finite sample properties of the proposed estimator using a Monte Carlo experiment; discuss the importance of the spatial sample selection model in applied work, and illustrate the application of our method by estimating the spatial production within a fishery with data that is censored for reasons of confidentiality. Working Paper 08-3