Individual Trandsferable Fishing Quotas in Chile: Recent History and Current Debates.

Artisanal and industrial fishing sectors in Chile require the consolidation of fishery management schemes that promote the rationalization of fishing efforts, adjusting them to scarcer fish stocks. We argue that a system based on Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) is the best available option, especially for the industrial sector. Individual assignments favor the coordination of collective solutions to rationalizing fishing efforts, while transferability promotes economically efficient solutions to the excessive fishing capacity problem. We propose an initial assignment of ITQs based on historical presence, conditioning the ITQ user-rights to annual payments that allow financing of the ITQs' management and enforcement costs. We defend an initial assignment of ITQs as transitory user-rights, with a reasonably long period of validity (15-20 years). We argue that this favors the political viability of being able to continue perfecting the ITQs system in the future. We also propose to empower Artisanal Fishermen Associations, which be able to provide reliable proofs of having relevant local representation, with faculties for deciding on and administering the distribution and use (among their members) of the total quota assigned to them by the fisheries regulator. These self-governing faculties would include the possibility of allowing for transferability of individual quota allocations. Finally, we propose that artisanal fishermen have the legal ability to carry out transactions with industrial interests, so that some proportion of the industrial quota could be caught inside the first five miles (currently being a reserved zone for artisanal fishing), for example using artisanal vessels for these purposes.

Fishing Location decisions in the Chilean-Transzonal Jack Mackerel Fishery

This study examines factors conditioning the fishing location decisions of the Chilean fleet operating in the South-east Pacific straddling jack mackerel fishery, considering voyage data for the1987-2004 period. As from the early 1990s, this fleet began to move beyond the 200 nm zone, responding to changes in the spatial distribution of the species. It is thought that this change dynamics may have been intensified by the strong 1997-98 El Niño event. The return of distant water-fishing-nation’s fleets to this fishery, as from the year 2000, has increased interest in understanding effects related with this spatial change dynamics. This paper is an econometric analysis of the effect of environmental, regulatory, technological and economic factors on the fishing location decisions of the Chilean fleet working in this fishery. The possible influence of El Niño events on the spatial operations of this fleet is tested.

Deployable Arches Based on Regular Polygon Geometry

This paper discusses a deployable-arch-structure design that is built using articulated bars, commonly called a scissor-system, and is based on the regular polygon geometry. The deployed-arch shape can be determined by inscribing regular polygon geometry in a circle. It is defined by the: a. number of bars required, b. position of the pivots, c. pivot-point distances, d. bar length, and e. open-geometry angle of the arches. The goal is a deployable half dome made up of semi-arches. Traditional arch construction depends on external structures to provide stability until the keystone is set, which then allows the supports to removed. Deployable structures avoid the need for these external supports greatly simplifying the assembly process and deployment time.Postprint (published version

Harvesting technology and catch-to-biomass dependence: The case of small pelagic fish

This note deals with a harvesting model for a single stock fishery. In the case of small pelagic fish it seems reasonable to consider harvest functions depending nonlinearly on fishing effort and on fish stock. Empirical evidence about these fish species suggests that marginal catch does not necessarily react in a linear way to changes in fishing effort and fish stock levels. This is in contradiction with traditional fishery models where catch-to-input marginal productivities are normally assumed to be constant. While allowing for non linearities in both catch-to-effort and catch-to-stock parameters, this note extends the traditional analysis by focusing on the dependence of the stationary solutions upon the nonlinear catch-to-biomass parameter. Given the emphasis on the case of small pelagic fish, the analysis considers positive but small values for the catch-to-stock parameter.small pelagic fisheries, harvesting functions, Cobb-Douglas production function, optimal control, maximum principle.

Catch Efficiency in the Chilean Pelagic Fishery: Does size matter ?

This paper examines the determinants of technical efficiency for a sample of 204 industrial vessels operating in the Southern-Central pelagic fishery of Chile during the 1985-95 period. Data on vessel's annual landings and fishing effort, vessel's size, age, fishing experience and vessel's controlling firm are analysed considering a Translog stochastic frontier model à-la Battese-Coelli (1995), which includes a vessel-specific inefficiency model. Yearly averages for vessel efficiency vary from 50% to 86%. Close to 90% of the residuals' total variance is accounted by the inefficiency term, suggesting a significant disparity in vessels' catch performance. Vessel age and scale of operation are found to be significant in explaining efficiency. Larger vessels tend to be the most efficient and the ones showing least variance in their efficiency. Smaller vessels, which on average are also the oldest in the fleet, show greater dispersion and lower efficiency scores. We confirm prior results suggesting vessel-level economies of scale at this fishery, related to fishing effort intensity. Explanatory variables aggregated at the ship-owner level, which aim at controlling the firm's operating scale, are also significant as a whole when explaining vessel-level efficiency. We find positive search externalities associated to the number of vessels under control of a given firm, as well as external diseconomies related to each firm's fleet use. Overall, we report significant productive heterogeneity in the fleet under study where control variables associated to 'size effects' do indeed play a significant role.

Downward Adjustments in a Cyclical Environment: The Case of Chilean Pelagic Fisheries

Often the scale of production of many industrial fisheries in the world shows rigidity vis à vis declines in fish abundance, which on occasions has generated fishing collapse. This paper studies the two fisheries with the greatest volume of landings in Chile, and which are also characterized by strong variability in their abundance. Production-side aspects that affect the incentives to adjust towards lower fishing efforts are analyzed. To do so, production functions for industrial fleets at each fishery are estimated by resorting to panel data. Two main results are obtained. First, we confirm the empirical relevance of Translog harvest technologies. This contradicts a frequent practice in bioeconomic models, which considers harvest-inputs elasticities as being constant and independent from the scale of production. Second, a set of production-side effects are identified that weaken the incentives to adjust towards lower fishing efforts: increasing returns in the use of variable inputs, which are also strengthened by external economies associated to the aggregate searching effort for fish, and catch yields sensitive to changes in abundance, but where the strength of this effect decreases as abundance declines.

'El Niño' Effects and Biomass Endogeneity in a Harvest Function: The Chilean Jack Mackerel Fishery

The main goal of this paper consists in estimating the input parameters of an annual harvest function for the Chilean jack mackerel stock; particularly, the effects of biomass on catch. One of the main problems faced is that the biomass variable is possibly endogenous, which would bias the estimators if the problem remains unsolved. Our empirical strategy consists in estimating a per vessel harvest function using panel data, which allows us to control for vessels' unobserved heterogeneity, and episodes of 'El Niño' phenomenon as valid instrumental variable for biomass, which allows us to control for the potential biomass endogeneity. This strategy produces consistent estimates of the biomass coefficient. The results, using a panel of industrial vessels operating in the central-southern region of Chile during the period 1985-2002, show that the endogeneity of the biomass variable biases upwardly the magnitude of its coefficient in a Cobb-Douglas harvest function. In the case of our data, the endogeneity bias even changes the sign of the catch-to-biomass elasticity. A first contribution of the paper is to address the endogeneity of biomass in a harvest function, an issue often underestimated in the empirical literature. A second contribution is related to 'El Niño' effects on the Chilean jack mackerel stock. The results show that an oceanic 'El Niño' episode not only has negative contemporaneous effects on jack mackerel biomass but also negative biomass effects lasting for at least two additional years.El Niño phenomenon; pelagic fisheries; Chilean jack mackerel; Instrumental variable estimation; marginal stock effects; endogenous biomass

La reforma constitucional de 2005 en materia de tratados internacionales

La reforma constitucional aprobada en el mes de Agosto pasado asumió una serie de vacíos e interrogantes planteados por la redacción de las normas contenidas en el texto original de la Constitución Política en materia de tratados internacionales. Ello, sin duda, ha venido a  perfeccionar la Carta Fundamental; no obstante han quedado pendientes una serie de materias indispensables de abordar para lograr la plena inserción de Chile en el mundo globalizado