Fishing Technology and Optimal Distribution of Harvest Rates

In this paper we analyze the optimal management of a joint ownership fishery exploitation model where agents use different fishing gears. As opposed to other works, we consider a model in which the fishing technology affects resource's growth not only through the harvest function, but also through the natural growth rate of the resource. The main objective is to capture the evidence that some fishing gears alter the habitat of the resource, and may alter the natural growth rate of the resource. The main result we obtain is that, when the natural growth of the resource is altered by the fishing technology, the optimal stock is not independent of how harvest quotas are distributed among the agents. Thus, in this context, a fishing policy that determines, first, the optimum stock and, secondly, decides on how to distribute the harvest among the different agents will not be efficient.Financial support from grants UPV/EHU 035-321-HB070/96, GV HU-1998-133 and Gobierno Vasco PI95/13 is gratefully acknowleged

A bayesian estimation of the economic effects of the Common Fisheries Policy on the Galician Fleet: a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium approach

What would have happened if a relatively looser fisheries policy had been implemented in the European Union (EU)? Using Bayesian methods a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model is estimated to assess the impact of the European Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) on the economic performance of a Galician (north- west of Spain) fleet highly dependant on the EU Atlantic southern stock of hake. Our counterfactual analysis shows that if a less effective CFP had been implemented during the period 1986–2012, fishing opportunities would have increased, leading to an increase in labour hours of 4.87%. However, this increase in fishing activity would have worsened the profitability of the fleet, dropping wages and rental price of capital by 6.79% and 0.88%, respectively. Welfare would also be negatively affected since, in addition to the increase in hours worked, consumption would have reduced by 0.59%.Da-Rocha, García-Cutrín and Gutiérrez acknowledge financial support from the European Commission (MINOUW, project H2020-SFS-2014-2, number 634495) and the Spanish Ministry of the Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (ECO2016-78819-R, AEI/FEDER, UE). Prellezo acknowledges financial support from the Basque Government (Department of Economic Development and Infrastructures of the Basque Government). Da-Rocha and García-Cutrín also acknowledge financial support from Xunta de Galicia (GRC 2015/014 and ECOBAS). Gutiérrez also acknowledges financial support from the Basque Government (MacLab IT-793-13). This publication reflects the views of the authors only and none of the funding parties may be held liable for any use which may be made of the information contained therein

Measuring the value of ecosystem-based fishery management using financial portfolio theory

We highlight the potential benefits of adopting Ecosystem-based Fishery Management (EBFM). We compare the EBFM implementation with the more traditional single-stock approach. We show the contribution of the portfolio theory to the EBFM, which can be achieved by selecting an optimal portfolio to maximise the average revenues and minimise the variance. We use this approach to construct two frontiers: the ecosystem efficient frontier, which considers stock interactions (the variance-covariance matrix), and the stock efficient frontier,only considering individual stock variances. We also define two risk gaps. The first gap shows the reduction in the standard deviation per unit of revenuethat the fleet could have achieved if they had decided to use the optimal portfolio of the stock frontier instead ofthe historical portfolio. The second gap reflects the reduction in the standard deviation per unit of revenue when the management moves from the stock frontier to the ecosystem frontier portfolio. This approach is adapted to the Basque inshore fleet. According to our results, taking the single-stock approach as the benchmark, the EBFM would obtain the same historical revenue while reducing the risk by 23%.Alternatively, allowing the same level of risk, it could achieve a 21% increase in revenues.This work has received funding from Basque Government Department of Education (Grant IT-799-13). I. Carmona has benefited from a grant of the Department of Economic Development and Competitiveness of the Basque Government. A. Ansuategi, J.M. Chamorro and M. Escapa also thank financial support from the University of the Basque Country (Grant GIU 18-136) and from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Grant RTI2018-093352-B-I00)