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TRENDS IN FISHERIES POLICY: RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES FOR EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS

TRENDS IN FISHERIES POLICY: RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES FOR EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS. James E. Wilen Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics University of California, Davis. Experimental Economics Workshop University of Alaska Anchorage July 2007.

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TRENDS IN FISHERIES POLICY: RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES FOR EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS

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  1. TRENDS IN FISHERIES POLICY: RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES FOR EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS James E. Wilen Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics University of California, Davis Experimental Economics Workshop University of Alaska Anchorage July 2007

  2. ECONOMISTS’ VIEW OF THE FISHERIES MANAGEMENT PROBLEM

  3. REAL WORLD FISHERIES MANAGEMENT • Harvest decisions predetermined using biological criteria • Management decisions are primarily allocation decisions • Top-down, legislative, command and control institutions dominate globally and in U.S. • Economics input: cost analysis of options • Policies chase symptoms of open access behavior (endlessly)

  4. EVOLUTION OF FISHERIES MANAGEMENT INSTITUTIONS • PURE OPEN ACCESS • REGULATED OPEN ACCESS • REGULATED RESTRICTED ACCESS • RIGHTS-BASED SYSTEMS • Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) • Harvester cooperatives • Community quotas • Territorial Use Rights Fisheries (TURFs)

  5. FORCES AFFECTING CHANGE • Failure to achieve biological criteria • Economic instability and low returns • New constituencies for rationalization • NGOs--Environmental Defense • Philanthropic organizations • Fishermen • Fisheries economists • Demonstration effects

  6. ON THE CUSP • (Slowly) growing understanding that perverse incentives have driven past failures • Growing understanding that incentives matter • Institutional design questions • Predictive rather than normative questions • Real need for predicting how rules of the game affect behavior and performance • High level of uncertainty and fear of the unknown among some holdouts • Political process slow (reluctant) to move

  7. RESEARCH CHALLENGES • The production process in fisheries • Models of behavior: what are they maximizing? • Processes of rent dissipation: open access, regulated open access,regulated restricted access • Behavior of cooperatives • Club formation: the magic “N” • Consequences of idiosyncratic institutional design • Sanctioning bad behavior • Spatial policies and metapopulation management • Space-based versus species-based rights • Perceptions of fairness and policy development

  8. HOW DOES FISHERIES SCIENCE CHARACTERIZE THE POLICY PROBLEM? CAUSE PROBLEM • Greed • Short sightedness • Prospects of wealth • Over-harvesting • Habitat destruction • Multi-species interaction • By-catch • Fishing down the food chain SOLUTION • Tighter controls • Precautionary principle • Adaptive management • Ecosystem management • Networks of reserves

  9. HOW DOES ECONOMICS CHARACTERIZE THE FISHERIES POLICY PROBLEM? CAUSE PROBLEM • Insecure • property rights • Race to fish • - Over-capitalization • - Excessive by-catch • - Mixed species fishing • - Habitat destruction • - Political manipulation • - Mixed use conflict • - Perverse innovation SOLUTION • Fix property rights problem - ITQs, IFQs, etc. - Cooperatives, TURFs

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