1,721,130 research outputs found
Separating resource rents from intra-marginal rents in fisheries economics survey data
No full textEconomic surveys of fisheries are undertaken in several countries as a means of assessing the economic performance of their fisheries. The level of economic profits accruing in the fishery can be estimated from the average economic profits of the boats surveyed. Economic profits consist of two components—resource rent and intra-marginal rent. From a fisheries management perspective, the key indicator of performance is the level of resource rent being generated in the fishery. Consequently, these different components need to be separated out. In this paper, a means of separating out the rent components is identified for a heterogeneous fishery. This is applied to the multi-purpose fleet operating in the English Channel. The paper demonstrates that failing to separate out these two components may result in a misrepresentation of the economic performance of the fishery
Corporate-cooperative management of fisheries: A potential alternative governance structure for low value small fisheries?
No full textWhile the economic and environmental benefits of fisheries management are well accepted, the costs of effective management in low value fisheries, including the research necessary to underpin such management, may be considerable relative to the total economic benefits they may generate. Co-management is often seen as a panacea in low value fisheries. Increasing fisher participation increases legitimacy of management decision in the absence of detailed scientific input. However, where only a small number of operators exist, the potential benefits of co-management are negated by the high transaction cost to the individual fishers engaging in the management process. From an economic perspective, sole ownership has been identified as the management structure which can best achieve biological and economic sustainability. Moving low value fisheries with a small number of participants to a corporate-cooperative management model may come close to achieving these sole ownership benefits, with lower transaction costs. In this paper we look at the applicability of different management models with industry involvement to low value fisheries with a small number of participants. We provide an illustration as to how a fishery could be transitioned to a corporate-cooperative management model that captures the key benefits of sole management at a low cost and is consistent with societal objectives
Economic and financial performance of the UK English Channel fleet
No full textThe English Channel fishery is a multispecies multigear fishery that can be considered to be an amalgam of numerous separate sub-fisheries. Commercial activity in the fishery is predominantly undertaken by fishers from the UK and France.\ud
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The purpose in this paper is to present the results of a cost and earnings survey carried out on the UK fishers in the English Channel. These results were used to assess the financial and economic performance of boats in the various component fisheries. Performance was examined in terms of both boat size and main fishing activity. \ud
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From the results, it was estimated that most operators covered their cash costs during the 1994-95 financial year. However, the level of cash profits varied significantly between boats depending on size class and main fishing activity. About 11 per cent of fishers interviewed were not covering their cash costs.\ud
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Most operators also covered their economic costs during the survey year. Economic costs include non-cash costs such as the opportunity cost of capital and labour, the returns that could be earned by these factors of production if they had been employed in the next best alternative activity. These non-cash costs are not included in a financial analysis but are explicitly included in an economic analysis. On average, economic profit in the fishery was negligible. Again, this varied significantly between boat size and main fishing activity. In total, around 29 per cent of the fleet were earning negative economic profits.\ud
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The fishery as a whole was not earning positive economic profits in 1994-95. From experiences in other fisheries around the world, fisheries are capable of earning substantial economic profits provided they are effectively managed. This implies that the English Channel fishery was not being managed to its full potential in 1994-95. Fisheries management has many objectives, of which increasing economic performance is but one. \ud
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Fisheries managers can manage their fisheries either directly through imposing restrictions or indirectly through offering incentives and thereby influencing the behaviour of fishers. Fishing behaviour is largely driven by economic incentives. While considerable attention has been paid to the assessment of the biological status of the fishery, little attention has been paid to the economic status of the fishery. This study is the first stage in addressing this imbalance. The assessment of economic performance is a key element in furthering the understanding of the\ud
economic incentives that exist in the fishery
Implications of differences in technical efficiency of fishing boats for capacity measurement and reduction
No full textCapacity measurement and reduction is a major international issue to emerge in the new millennium. However, there has been limited assessment of the success of capacity reduction schemes (CRS). In this paper, the success of a CRS is assessed for a European fishery characterised by differences in efficiency levels of individual boats. In such a fishery, given it is assumed that the least efficient producers are the first to exit through a CRS, the reduction in harvesting capacity is less than the nominal reduction in physical fleet capacity. Further, there is potential for harvesting capacity to increase if remaining vessels improve their efficiency
Implicit discount rates and fisheries management : is there a relationship?
No full textFishers are faced with multiple risks, including unpredictability of future catch rates, prices and costs.\ud
While the latter are largely beyond the control of fisheries managers, effective fisheries management should reduce uncertainty about future catches. Different management instruments are likely to have different impacts on the risk perception of fishers, and this should manifest itself in their implicit discount rate. Assuming licence and quota values represent the net present value of the flow of expected future profits, then a proxy for the implicit discount rate of vessels in a fishery can be derived by the ratio of the average level of profits to the average licence/quota value. From this, an indication of the risk perception can be derived, assuming higher discount rates reflect higher levels of systematic risk. In this paper, we apply the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) to determine the risk premium implicit in the discount rates for a range of Australian fisheries, and compare this with the set of management instruments in place. We test the assumption that rights based management instruments lower perceptions of risk in fisheries. We find little evidence to support this assumption. although the analysis was based on only limited data. \u
Factors Affecting Technical Efficiency in Fisheries: Stochastic Production Frontier versus Data Envelopment Analysis approaches
No full textTechnical efficiency (TE) measures the relationship between a vessel's inputs to the fishing process and its outputs, with full efficiency being achieved when outputs are maximised from a given set of inputs. Inputs can be fixed (e.g. the vessel, gear, engine, onboard equipment, etc.) or variable (e.g. time spent fishing, size of crew). Fixed inputs may also be intangible, such as skipper skill and quality differences between technologies. TE scores can be calculated using the econometric stochastic production frontier (SPF) or the non-stochastic, linear-programming data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodologies. This paper compares the results of both techniques for segments of the English Channel fisheries. The influence of factors most affecting technical efficiency is analysed using an SPF inefficiency model and tobit regression of DEA-derived scores. Such factors include vessel and skipper characteristics. It is argued that DEA can be used as an alternative to SPF techniques when there is difficulty in specifying the correct SPF model. There is general consistency between SPF and DEA analyses in regard to the factors affecting TE
Physical versus harvest-based measures of capacity: the case of the United Kingdom vessel capacity unit system
No full textEffective management of fishing capacity requires reliable estimates of current capacity, and to this end most countries have developed a form of capacity measure usually based on some physical characteristics of the fleet. In the United Kingdom, the "capacity" measurement system currently in place is used as the basis of existing capacity reduction programmes. Each vessel has a number of Vessel Capacity Units (VCUs) defined by its size and engine power. An assumption is made that this measure is related to the ability of the fleet to catch fish. More recently, techniques have been developed to measure capacity directly in terms of potential output. In this paper, the fishing capacity of a sample of UK otter trawlers and a set of boats that primarily use static gear (i.e. nets and lines) is estimated using data envelopment analysis (DEA). Estimates are made on a species-by-species basis for the key species harvested. These are compared to the existing measures of physical capacity. The results suggest that VCUs may provide a reasonable approximation of fishing capacity for fleets using mobile gear, but may be inappropriate for fleets using static gear. Implications for capacity management based on the physical measures, given the results, are drawn
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
The Contribution of Unmeasurable Inputs to Fisheries Production: An Analysis of Technical Efficiency of Fishing Vessels in the English Channel
No full textVariations in the efficiency of demersal trawlers operating in the English Channel were examined through the estimation of a stochastic frontier production function. The most important measurable factor affecting efficiency was the age of the vessel. However, unmeasurable factors accounted for about 65% of the variation in efficiency, and as much as 9% of the total variation in catches between boats. It is postulated that most of this variation was due to differences in skipper and crew skill. In contrast, “luck” accounted for around 11% of the variation in catches between boats. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.
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