capacity utilization under regulatory constraints this paper presents a methodology for predicting the effect of quota type regulatory constraints on capacity utilization for a multiproduct profit maximizing firm the approach builds on recent advances in the use of virtual prices to model the effects of rationing this allows the effects of regulatory constraints to be examined ex ante the methodol ogy is illustrated through a case study of the imposition of output quotas in an open access marine fishing industry on the pacific coast of the united states the results suggest that for certain species output quotas can cause strong disinvestment incentives have been used for many years to analyze the current status of the economy the expansion ary or contractionary forces on investment and inflation and productivity movements tradi tional cu measures were based on the notion of maximum possible output recently economists have developed measures derived from the eco nomic theory of the firm and based instead on a notion of optimal output berndt and fuss 1986 hickman 1964 klein 1960 morrison 1985 1988 segerson and squires 1990a these measures assume that some inputs are quasi fixed and that capacity utilization is determined by the level of the quasi fixed input s relative to the level of output previous studies of theory based cu measures have generally assumed that the industry under study was free from regulatory constraints an exception is morrison s 1988 study which ana lyzed among other things the effect of pollution control regulations on capacity utiliza tion in the u s and canadian steel industries the analysis is retrospective however since it studied the impacts of regulations that were al ready in effect in many cases it would be useful to be able to predict the effect of proposed regulations on ca pacity utilization such prospective or ex ante analysis would provide regulators with useful information regarding the likely effect of alterna tive policies on investment incentives for exam ple regulatory production limits on a single product such as quotas may cause multiproduct firms to change the volume and mix of their production which could in turn change invest ment incentives 1 likewise input use restrictions could affect both output supplies and the de mands for unregulated inputs thereby altering investment incentives predictions of these changes would contribute to designing more ef fective public policies regulating capacity and in vestment

renewable resource economists and policy what differences have we made abstract this paper surveys developments in fisheries economics and fisheries policy over the past half century early work clarified the nature of the economic issues associated with open access laying the groundwork for changes in policies after coastal nations expanded their jurisdictions in 1976 perhaps the most important point made by economists is that property rights matter and that open access conditions create economic as well as biological problems the policy process has begun to create property rights systems although many of the world s fisheries still operate under mixed systems of regulations and open access incentives

ecosystem wealth in the barents sea abstract we develop an inclusive wealth type index for natural capital in the barents sea that accounts for ecosystem services via trophic interactions we consider three key fish species in the barents sea under stochastic growth dynamics compared to evaluation at market prices the estimated wealth from the inclusive wealth approach is several times higher ecosystem wealth depends on the management scheme and we consider both business as usual bau and an optimized ecosystem based management scheme ebm while bau maintains wealth near its current level 5 increase in the long run ebm increases wealth with almost 20 in the short run and more than 25 in the long run realized shadow prices suggest that prey species stocks are undervalued when evaluated at market prices

firm behavior under quantity controls the theory of virtual quantities the theory of virtual quantities the dual to virtual prices provides a framework to analyze competitive multiproduct firm behavior under multiple quantity controls on inputs and outputs including command and control quotas and transferable property rights the framework addresses the firm s reactions to regulatory controls impacts of adding or dropping quantity controls inferring unrationed from rationed production and conversion from command and control quotas to cap and trade systems with transferable property rights and secondary market behavior the paper develops reasons for failure of quasi concavity of technology extends the elasticity of intensity s properties and integrates the virtual price and virtual quantity frameworks virtual quantities are applied to assess potential firm responses to quantity controls and a potential transferable property right in a malaysian fishery

energy consumption and urban sprawl evidence for the spanish case residential electricity consumption constitutes one of the largest sources of spanish final energy demand to improve electricity savings policies oriented towards efficiency in residential consumption such as replacement of appliances or the construction of nearly zero energy buildings have been suggested and implemented however the potential relevance of urban structural characteristics such as the increase in detached houses in sprawling residential areas has not often been considered the aim of this research is to analyse the relevance of living in a detached house located in a dispersed urban area to household electricity consumption thus an electricity consumption model is estimated by using household socioeconomic variables and including urban characteristics as its determinants such us the level of urban agglomeration or whether families live in detached sprawling homes the model is estimated by using 2014 household budget survey hbs microdata and applying ordinary least squares ols as well as quantile regressions qr as econometric procedures endogeneity problems are corrected by means of instrumental variables the results confirm that living in a detached house significantly increases electricity consumption whereas urban agglomerations have the opposite effect sprawl is occurring rapidly in spanish cities and according to our results it could constitute a relevant source of increase in electricity demand in the following years

optimal harvest in an age structured model with different fishing selectivity an age structured model of a fishery is studied where two fishing fleets or fishing agents are targeting two different mature age classes of the fish stock the agents are using different fishing gear with different fishing selectivity the model includes young and old mature fish that can be harvested in addition to an age class of immature fish the paper describes the optimal harvesting policy under different assumptions on the objectives of the social planner and on fishing selectivity first biomass yield is maximized under perfect fishing selectivity second equilibrium profit rent is maximized under perfect fishing selectivity and third equilibrium profit is maximized under imperfect fishing selectivity the paper provides results that differ significantly from the standard lumped parameter also surplus production or biomass model

a parametric approach to efficiency measurement using a flexible profit function although the idea of measuring productive efficiency goes back to farrell 8 the econometric estimation of it began with aigner lovell and schmidt 1 and meeusen and van den broeck 17 in aigner lovell and schmidt 1 and meeusen and van den broeck 17 and their extensions which incorporate either cost minimizing or profit maximizing behavior efficiency is measured relative to a frontier an alternative to the frontier approach that started with hopper 10 and lau and yotopoulos 15 is to measure efficiency mostly allocative without estimating any frontier in the latter approach allocative inefficiency defined as the deviations of the first order conditions of profit maximization or cost minimization is modeled through shadow virtual prices which are parametric functions of observed prices the shadow price approach is extensively used in the literature on efficiency measurement because it has an advantage over the frontier approach which requires distributional assumptions on the error terms especially in cross sectional models in empirical studies on the efficiency of regulated utilities it has been argued that due to the presence of rate of return and other regulations these firms optimize with respect to shadow prices instead of observed prices these studies often fail to consider the possibility that the firms under question may be technically inefficient as well which can affect allocation of inputs 1 this issue is important in both cost minimization and profit maximization cases this paper uses a profit maximization framework and develops a generalized profit function approach that accommodates both technical and allocative inefficiencies in the context of a panel data model the relationship between production technical inefficiency loss of output due to technical inefficiency and profit technical inefficiency profit loss due to technical inefficiency is derived for a flexible production function presently it is believed that the derivation of this relationship is only possible for the self dual production functions we show that if the profit function is translog some popular approaches used in modeling technical and allocative inefficiency are incorrect in particular we show that i models that fail to include technical inefficiency and consider only allocative inefficiency yield biased and inconsistent parameter estimates ii if technical inefficiency is neglected the measure of technical change will be biased the generalized profit function developed here is capable of distinguishing between technical change and time varying technical inefficiency such a distinction is not possible if for example one uses

a model of production with supply management for the canadian agricultural sector the production structure of the canadian agricultural sector is modeled by an output constrained multiproduct profit function to account for the existence of supply management policies the le chatelier effects of supply constraints are illustrated and the comparative statics of supply management is shown to depend under input normality on the type of jointness convexity is tested and accepted and nonjointness is rejected by the estimated normalized quadratic profit function the results support the hypothesis of nonjointness due to allocatable fixed factors decreasing the supply of managed commodities will increase the supply of unrestricted commodities while total input use is reduced

mitigating america s demographic dilemma by pre funding social security abstract financing social security benefits at current levels implies significant increases in payroll taxes within the next 20 years under current us demographic developments using a general equilibrium overlapping generations model with realistic patterns of fertility and lifespan extension this study shows that future generations would be harmed during the demographic transition due to rising payroll taxes which crowd out savings and slow real wage growth below the rate of technological progress a faster rate of technological progress would mitigate only some of the payroll tax increase and its economic consequences but could not overcome them addressing the financing problem by reducing social security benefits as needed or by raising the eligibility age for benefits imposes major welfare losses on current or near term retirees by contrast a pre funding of social security financed with consumption taxes more evenly spreads the welfare losses across generations and it helps future generations especially the poor by stimulating capital formation

developing country fisheries and technical efficiency the java sea purse seine fishery the analysis of technical efficiency in developing country agriculture is well established but has been overlooked for developing country commercial marine fisheries policies raising technical efficiency in agriculture are viewed as uniformly positive but are a mixed blessing in fisheries due to the open access property right and common pool resource this study explores this contradiction and policies aimed to promote sustainable development and management of renewable common pool resources through a case study of the java sea purse seine fishery season of the year rather than fisher or vessel characteristics primarily determines technical efficiency the results are contrasted with developing country agriculture and conclusions drawn for fisheries development strategies

seasonal harvest patterns in multispecies fisheries fishers face multidimensional decisions when to fish what species to target and how much gear to deploy most bioeconomic models assume single species fisheries with perfectly elastic demand and focus on inter seasonal dynamics in real world fisheries vessels hold quotas for multiple species with heterogeneous biological and or market conditions that vary intra seasonally we analyze within season behavior in multispecies fisheries with individual fishing quotas accounting for stock aggregations capacity constraints and downward sloping demand numerical results demonstrate variation in harvest patterns we specifically find 1 harvests for species with downward sloping demand tend to spread out 2 spreading harvest of a high value species can cause lower value species to be harvested earlier in the season and 3 harvest can be unresponsive or even respond negatively to biological aggregation when fishers balance incentives in multispecies settings we test these using panel data from the norwegian multispecies groundfish fishery and find evidence for all three we extend the numerical model to account for transitions to management with individual fishing quotas in multispecies fisheries we show that under some circumstances fishing seasons could contract or spread out

economic inefficiency in a revenue setting the norwegian whitefish fishery the main focus in the inefficiency literature is on suboptimal input use and how this causes increased costs due to technical and allocative inefficiency production or cost functions are then typ

multi output nonfrontier primal measures of capacity and capacity utilization this article implements an econometric approach for generating primal capacity output and utilization measures for fisheries in situations where regulatory environmental and resource conditions affect catch levels but are not independently identified in the data frontier based capacity models may interpret such impacts as production inefficiency however if such inefficiencies are unlikely to be eliminated the implied potential output increases may be unrealistic we develop a multi output multi input stochastic transformation function framework that permits various assumptions about how output composition may change when operating at full capacity we apply our model to catcher processor vessels in the alaskan pollock fishery

can purse seiners target yellowfin tuna both purse seine and longline fleets exploit yellowfin tuna in the western pa cific region management options available to achieve the optimal allocation of the yellowfin stock depend on whether purse seiners can con trol the species mix of their catch by targeting their fishing effort a fishing strategy to target effort on juvenile yellowfin is discussed and a supply model based on a revenue maximizing framework is estimated using data of japanese and u s purse seine vessels in papua new guinea the hypothesis of targeting is con firmed for the more modern u s fleet but not for the more traditional japanese vessels jel q22

private property and economic efficiency a study of a common pool resource abstract the british columbia halibut fishery provides a natural experiment of the effects of privatizing the commons using firm level data from the fishery 2 years before private harvesting rights were introduced the year they were implemented and 3 years afterward a stochastic frontier is estimated to test for changes in technical allocative and economic efficiency the study indicates that 1 the short run efficiency gains from privatization may take several years to materialize and can be compromised by restrictions on transferability duration and divisibility of the property right 2 substantial long run gains in efficiency can be jeopardized by preexisting regulations and the bundling of the property right to the capital stock and 3 the gains from privatization are not just in terms of cost efficiency but include important benefits in revenue and product form

sustainable fisheries development in the tropics trawlers and licence limitation in malaysia sustainable fisheries development requires sound fisheries management area licence limitation programmes may form the cornerstone for most tropical multispecies fisheries management programmes an empirical analysis of peninsular malaysian fishing trawlers is used to design an area licence limitation programme that conforms to the multiproduct production technology and cost and revenue structures to best accommodate condtions of asymmetric information between the regulator and fishing vessels

intrinsic fish characteristics and intraseason production efficiency a management level bioeconomic analysis of a commercial fishery biological changes in pacific whiting merluccius productus and corresponding production yields were used to model a vertically integrated fishery from harvest through processing the seasonal bioeconomic programming model incorporated stock dynamics with the interactive economic effects of intrinsic fish quality the harvest schedule and quota allocation between heterogeneous user groups the optimal management plan would maximize discounted net industry revenues npv given a minimum spawning biomass npv was maximized when the intraseason timing of harvest coincided with the seasonal improvement in fish quality e g following spawning and or migration npv was only marginally affected however by the quota allocation between groups

effects of land use and transportation policies on the spatial distribution of urban energy consumption in brazil abstract we evaluate the spatial effects of urban land use and transportation policies on energy consumption in the brazilian economy the model developed in this paper treats as endogenous the urban spatial distribution of residential location structure density commuting behavior and energy use facilitating a general equilibrium energy accounting of policies affecting transportation costs or land use we calibrate this model with respect to five monocentric brazilian cities in order to assess the implications three distinct policies a change in the gasoline price vehicle fuel efficiency regulations and a change in the price of agricultural land gasoline price increases reduce energy consumption directly though reduced commuting and indirectly through higher residential density on the other hand while fuel efficiency regulations reduce energy consumption in total the direct effect is somewhat offset by the indirect effect of sprawl which increases energy consumption increases to the price of agricultural land increase the energy efficiency of the city by increasing density and shortening commutes

effects of urbanisation on energy consumption in china as a key issue in china s economic development urbanisation creates increasing pressure on energy supply and the natural environment thus a better understanding of the relationship between urbanisation and energy consumption is necessary for chinese decision makers at various levels to address energy security and sustainable economic and social development this paper empirically investigates the effects of china s urbanisation on residential energy consumption rec and production energy consumption pec through a time series analysis the results show that compared with rural areas urbanisation slows per capita rec growth because of the economy of scale and technological advantages associated with urbanisation but has greater promotional effects on the growth of rec and the improvement of rec structure the economic growth caused by urbanisation most significantly contributes to an increase in pec whereas technological advancement was found to reduce the scale of pec except from 2001 to 2005 finally the structural effect of the energy supply increased rather than decreased china s pec and the effect of industrial structure adjustment on pec was found to be insignificant

parametric estimation of technical and allocative inefficiency with panel data the error components approach to estimating allocative inefficiency imposes restrictive assumptions on the distributions of the errors and functional form the parametric approach does not require special assumptions about the error distribution or technology but typically assumes technical efficiency or restrictive functional forms the parametric approach also allows for systematic firm responses to shadow prices the authors generalize the parametric approach to a panel data setting and show that input and firm specific allocative inefficiency as well as firm specific technical inefficiency can be identified and estimated using a flexible functional form this is demonstrated empirically with an application to u s airlines copyright 1994 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

optimal allocation of tac and the implications of implementing an itq management system for the north east arctic cod first we study the allocation rule applied to split the norwegian total allowable catch for cod between coastal and trawler vessels second we explore the bioeconomic implications of an itq management system for this fishery a model combining a cannibalistic biomodel with cooperative game theory is developed key results from the study are 1 the current allocation rule acts in opposite fashion to what may be considered bioeconomically optimal and 2 an itq system for this fishery is likely to result in economic losses as the biological advantages of harvesting with the two vessels types may be lost

hidden flexibility institutions incentives and the margins of selectivity in fishing the degree to which selectivity in fisheries is malleable to changes in incentive structures is critical for policy design we examine data for a multispecies trawl fishery before and after a transition from management under common pool quotas to a fishery cooperative and note a substantial shift in postcooperative catch from bycatch and toward valuable target species we examine the margins used to affect catch composition finding that large and fine scale spatial decision making and avoidance of night fishing were critical we argue that the poor incentives for selectivity in many systems may obscure significant flexibility in multispecies production technologies

estimating irrigator ability to pay for reclamation water the reclamation program sets prices based on irrigators ability to pay for water in contrast to the traditional approach the farm budget study this research develops a model of irrigator profit and ability to pay the shadow price marginal revenue of water is shown to measure ability to pay per acre foot of water the model can be estimated econometrically with commonly available although deficient data using data from thirteen water districts in california annual district level shadow price functions are derived for 1981 91 and compared to ability to pay estimates from a farm budget study of the districts

global growth ageing and inequality across and within generations the world s leading economies both developed and developing are engaged in an ever changing economic symbiosis that is governed in large part by demographics and technological change but also by pension healthcare and other fiscal policies this interconnected economic evolution what economists call general equilibrium growth holds important implications for inequality across and within generations this paper presents such a general equilibrium model it features six goods five regions three skill groups and 91 overlapping generations each making life cycle consumption and labour supply decisions the model pays special attention to the evolution of the chinese and indian economies thanks to their rapid technological advance and vast populations these nations will play an ever more dominant role in determining the world s supplies of capital and labour particularly unskilled labour the good news for the developed world is that china and india will supply it with major amounts of capital over time thanks to their high saving rates the bad news is that these economies are also likely to bring much more unskilled relative to skilled labour into the market which will over time dramatically reduce the relative wages of unskilled workers in the us europe and japan this relative increase in the world supply of unskilled workers reflects in large part the simple fact that china and india are gradually bringing each of their skill groups up to western standards but have relatively more unskilled labour in their work forces copyright 2010 oxford university press

production quota in multiproduct pacific fisheries abstract assessing the individual firm s technology and costs in a multispecies fishery allows design of a more effective output quota prior to regulation by anticipating and controlling for the firm s regulation induced responses an empirical study of a pacific coast trawl fishery indicates that the firm s flexibility of product decision is tightly constrained by its technology and cost structure hence as the resource stock for the regulated species sablefish deteriorates and the trip quota progressively tightens the firm cannot sufficiently reorganize its product bundle to preclude increasingly large sablefish disposal this defeats the purpose of the production quota

estimation of output and input technical efficiency using a flexible functional form and panel data the farrell 1957 concept of technical efficiency can be measured in two ways denoted output and input technical efficiency the empirical literature does not distinguish between the two measures and confusion exists regarding the required restrictions on technology for the specification of either measure with panel data the authors show how both types of efficiency when treated as fixed effects are to be specified in the context of a translog cost system technical efficiency enters the share equations only in the output case when homotheticity is not imposed the authors estimate their cost systems using panel data on u s airlines copyright 1994 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

the economics of urban density density boosts productivity and innovation improves access to goods and services reduces typical travel distances encourages energy efficient construction and transport and allows broader sharing of scarce urban amenities however density is also synonymous with crowding and makes living and moving in cities more costly we explore the appropriate measurement of density and describe how it is both a cause and a consequence of the evolution of cities we then discuss whether and how policy should target density and why in practice the tradeoff between its pros and cons is unhappily resolved by both market and political forces

the relative inefficiency of quotas the cheese case the nonequivalence of tariffs and quotas under a wide variety of circumstances is well established in economic theory this study considers heterogeneity as a source of nonequivalence and demonstrates its practical importance where restriction is inevitable the bias of economists in favor of price instruments is not thoroughly grounded this study should help provide a foundation the point of departure from the equivalence model is differentiation of products

assessing technical efficiency in commercial fisheries the mid atlantic sea scallop fishery despite the extensive effort to research issues of allocative efficiency in fisheries little empirical analysis of technical efficiency te in fisheries exists this study examines vessel efficiency using a stochastic production frontier based on a sample of sea scallop vessels operating in the mid atlantic between 1987 and 1990 estimates of te are computed and compared with input usage resource conditions economic performance and recently imposed regulations the analysis suggests that owners and captains only partially compensate for changes in resource conditions through the use of labor and fishing effort and recent regulations may improve overall te in the short run

estimating the effect of urban density on fuel demand much of the empirical literature on fuel demand presents estimates derived from national data which do not permit any explicit consideration of the spatial structure of the economy intuitively we would expect the degree of spatial concentration of activities to have a strong link with transport fuel consumption the present paper addresses this theme by estimating a fuel demand model for urban areas to provide a direct estimate of the elasticity of demand with respect to urban density fuel demand per capita is decomposed into car stock per capita fuel consumption per kilometre and annual distance driven per car per year urban density is found to affect fuel consumption mostly through variations in the car stock and in the distances travelled rather than through fuel consumption per kilometre

employer paid parking mode choice and suburbanization abstract this paper constructs a theoretical model that facilitates analysis of the effects of employer paid parking on mode choice road investment and suburbanization the model simplifies urban space by dividing it into two zones islands center and suburbs which are connected by a congested road and a public transit line each road commuter requires an allotment of cbd land for parking and because the central zone s area is fixed parking land reduces the amount available for central residences and cbd production the model characterizes optimal resource allocation from the perspective of a social planner the planning solution can be decentralized which requires employee rather than employer paid parking congestion tolls and a tax subsidy to offset the road capacity deficit surplus the analysis then considers the effect of switching to employer paid parking with the burden of parking costs shifting from road users to employers thus reducing the wage for all workers this switch inefficiently increases road usage and capacity investment while spurring an inefficient increase in suburbanization

urban economic theory land use and city size this book examines the economic reasons why people choose to live where they live and develops through analysis of the bid rent function a unified theory of urban land use and city size the first part of the book explicates the basic theory of urban land use and optimal city size residential location behavior of households is examined in a microeconomic framework and equilibrium and optimal patterns of residential land use are discussed the corresponding equilibrium and optimal city sizes are studied in a variety of contexts part two extends the classical theories of von thunen and alonso with the addition of externality factors such as local public goods crowding and congestion and racial prejudice the rigorous mathematical approach and theoretical treatment of the material make urban economic theory of interest to researchers in urban economics location theory urban geography and urban planning

unraveling the multiple margins of rent generation from individual transferable quotas individual transferable quotas itqs induce changes along both the extensive margin via consolidation of quota among fewer vessels and the intensive margin as harvesters adjust their behavior to itq incentives we use itq introduction in the bering sea crab fishery to decompose the sources of rent generation across both margins we embed an empirically calibrated structural model of the harvesting process into a sector level model allowing us to experimentally unravel the itq treatment we show that the magnitude and source of rent generation under itqs critically depends on the manner and degree of rent dissipation before itqs are implemented

regulation of fisheries bycatch with common pool output quotas abstract many fisheries around the world are plagued with the problem of bycatch the inadvertent harvesting and discard of non targeted species bycatch occurs when targeted and non targeted species coincide in the same habitat and gear is imperfectly selective one of the prevailing methods of controlling bycatch is the common pool quota system under this system biologists set total allowable catches tacs for both the targeted and non targeted species and the fishing season is closed when one of these tacs binds we develop a predictive model of a renewable resource that is regulated with this kind of common pool quota system the model demonstrates that the equilibrium will generally be characterized by excessive discards shortened seasons and foregone target species harvest these results occur even with very efficient low bycatch fishing gear we examine the sensitivity of our predictions to changes in technological parameters and degrees of spatial correlation of target and non target species finally we derive the optimal bycatch penalty function and describe its significance in light of various policy options available to regulators

measures of welfare effects in multiproduct industries the case of multispecies individual quota fisheries a framework is developed to measure the welfare effects of individual quota reforms in multiproduct industries using the multimarket welfare measure techniques suggested by just hueth and schmitz 1982 and the concept of virtual price in the production theory literature neary 1995 squires and kirkley 1996 under joint in input production it is shown that quasirent under a single quota can be measured by the producer surplus either in the output market for quota output or in the quota market under multiple quotas the welfare effects of quota policies can be measured in one of the quota markets using inverse derived equilibrium demand curves these results are obtained for a joint in input technology where positive production of at least one of the quota outputs is necessary for the firm to continue to operate application of the inverse derived demand functions for welfare measurement is shown for both transferable and nontransferable quotas

transferable quotas enforcement costs and typical firms an empirical application to the norwegian trawler fleet an alternative to traditional regulations of fisheries to avoid rent dissipation is the use of individual transferable quotas itqs where prices in the quota market provide the necessary information to owners of harvest rights to contract with each other however even under such a decentralized regime information on the underlying technology of the fishing vessels is also necessary first since most fisheries consist of many interrelated production processes in order to avoid rent dissipation by discarding wrong output mix etc the structure of production in the multispecies fishery must be known to design a proper quota system second an itq system may create incentives for misreporting by understating the actual catch this may especially be the case where the expected degree of self enforcement is low the paper proposes a way to reduce the information requirements under regulation with asymmetric information by constructing a typical firm and comparing performance for the other vessels to this firm based on the typical firm and if the industry is relatively homogenous the performance and hence catch of any other firm in the industry can be predicted within a certain range further the paper applies this idea to the norwegian trawler fleet to assess the production structure in terms of jointness input output separability and the supply and demand elasticities for the fishing firms this information characterizes the fishery and thus how the quota system may be designed and how to construct a yardstick in order to reduce the enforcement cost under a decentralized regulation of itqs

markets and rent dissipation in regulated open access fisheries abstract using a model of regulated open access resource use with markets we illustrate the potential complexity of interactions between markets product quality excess effort and regulatory behavior in fisheries our model assumes two product types one of which is processed and storable the model describes the equilibrium that results when effort responds to open access incentives and when regulators respond to effort growth by mitigating its potential harmful effects on biomass safety we use numerical simulations to demonstrate a mechanism by which market growth leads to the diversion of raw inputs into the inherently inferior market the result is a scenario in which rents are dissipated not only because excessive inputs raise costs but also because inferior product types reduce revenues we conclude with an illustrative decomposition of rent gains into revenue and cost savings gains from rationalizing a hypothetical fishery demonstrating the potential significance of market side rents

assessing efficiency gains from individual transferable quotas an application to the mid atlantic surf clam and ocean quahog fishery delayed fishing fleet restructuring complicates the assessment of efficiency gains from individual transferable quota itq fisheries management programs this article presents a methodology to estimate harvest sector efficiency gains in lieu of incomplete fleet restructuring the methodology is applied to assess the efficiency gains in the mid atlantic surf clam and ocean quahog fishery itq program while roughly 128 vessels harvested clams under the previous management regime the analysis suggests that 21 25 vessels will remain under ltqs the efficiency gains are estimated to be between 11 1 million and 12 8 million annually 1990 dollars

production technology costs and multiproduct industry structure an application of the long run profit function to the new england fishing industry the long run multiproduct profit function is developed to provide a more general procedure than the static minimum cost function to examine the technological and cost determinants of multiproduct industry structure and the likely form of any market equilibrium in this approach outputs are endogenous and the long run equilibrium levels of quasi fixed factors are endogenously determined the multiproduct structure of the multispecies new england fishing industry and the likely multi

fishing revenue productivity and product choice in the alaskan pollock fishery a key element in evaluating fishery management strategies is examining their effects on the economic performance of fishery participants yet nearly all empirical studies of fisheries focus exclusively on the amount of fish harvested the economic benefits derived from fish stocks involve the amount of revenue generated from fish processing which is linked to both the way fish are harvested and the products produced from the fish in this study we econometrically estimate a flexible revenue function for catcher processor vessels operating in the alaskan pollock fishery recognizing potential endogeneity and a variety of fishing inputs and conditions we find significant own price supply responses and product substitutability and enhanced revenues from increased fishing days and tow duration after a regulatory change introduced property rights through a new fishing cooperative we also find significant growth in economic productivity or higher revenues over time after controlling for observed productive factors and price changes which exceeds that attributable to increased harvest these patterns suggest that the move to rights based management has contributed significantly to economic performance in the pollock fishery

pension reform during the demographic transition the aim of this paper is to quantify the welfare effects of some currently discussed pension reform proposals in germany the analysis is based on an extended overlapping generations model which accounts for intra generational heterogeneity rising life expectancy and declining fertility given a baseline path of the economy under the existing unfunded pension system the model calculates the macroeconomic impact as well as the distributional and efficiency effects of various pension reform measures aimed at reducing the level of the future unfunded pension system simulations reveal that pension reforms cannot be evaluated solely in terms of inter and intra generational equity substantial efficiency gains or losses might arise if the linkage between contributions and benefits is improved or weakened

joint ventures and technology transfer the solomon islands pole and line fishery abstract joint ventures are a popular way of facilitating the transfer of technology from distant water fishing nations dwfns to developing resource owning countries in addition to being exploited by a joint venture the solomon islands fishing zone is also exploited by a dwfn fleet and a domestic fleet a stochastic frontier approach is used to compare changes in technology and technical inefficiency among the three fleets in the period 1988 1994 it is found that the level of productivity of the joint venture fleet is higher than that of the domestic fleet reflecting some past gains from the joint venture however the rate of increase of productivity is higher for the domestic fleet suggesting that the solomon islands are not receiving any on going benefits of technology transfer in return for concessional access to their waters

aging pension reform and capital flows a multi country simulation model we present a quantitative analysis of the effects of population aging and pension reform on international capital markets first demographic change alters the time path of aggregate savings within each country second this process may be amplified when a pension reform shifts old age provision towards more pre funding third while the patterns of population aging are similar in most countries timing and initial conditions differ substantially hence to the extent that capital is internationally mobile population aging will induce capital flows between countries all three effects influence the rate of return to capital and interact with the demand for capital in production and with labor supply in order to quantify these effects we develop a computational general equilibrium model we feed this multi country overlapping generations model with detailed long term demographic projections for seven world regions our simulations indicate that capital flows from fast aging regions to the rest of the world will initially be substantial but that trends are reversed when households decumulate savings we also conclude that closed economy models of pension reform miss quantitatively important effects of international capital mobility this version 25 august 2004

the general equilibrium effects of the residential property tax incidence and excess burden abstract an urban general equilibrium model is used to explore the efficiency effects and distributional consequences of the residential property tax in a model of a small open city the replacement of a nondistortionary land tax with the residential property tax reduces the land area density and population of the city the aggregate net return on land falls by an amount equal to 164 93 of total tax revenue in a model of a closed region when city q replaces the land tax with the residential property tax production and employment shift to other cities in the region the net return on land decreases in city q and increases in other cities in the region in aggregate landowners are made better off by the change in tax policy while residents are made worse off the excess burden of the property tax is computed as 6 5197 of tax revenue

the energy implications of city size and density abstract this paper develops a new open city urban simulation model capable of showing the urban form and energy consumption effects of variation in city size the model is able to consider city size differences caused by wage and amenity differentials both with and without housing and land use regulation the surprising conclusion is that per capita energy use is relatively invariant to city size when growth is driven by wages but falls modestly with growth induced by rising amenity common land use policies specifically density limits and greenbelts can positively or negatively affect both city welfare and energy use

adjustment cost and supply response in a fishery a dynamic revenue function in industries where firms can adjust product mix in response to price changes the process can be delayed by adjustment costs an example is fishermen who change fishing grounds to target different species if adjustment costs are sufficiently large this may hamper the fishermen s response so that regulatory tools that are not efficient in the long run are useful in the short run moreover adjustment costs can influence the choice of species targeted in this paper dynamic supply equations are specified using a revenue function approach different hypotheses about the dynamics of the supply equations are tested for norwegian trawlers

public regulation and the structure of production in multiproduct industries an application to the new england otter trawl industry this article considers the problem of managing multispecies fishing industries as one of regulating the production of individual multiproduct firms the multispecies new england otter trawl industry is examined within this framework empirical results derived from estimating a multiproduct profitfunction indicate that management consistent with the structures ofmultiproduct production and costs would directly regulate inputs little support is provided for applying the traditional bioeconomic model to the fishery studied

individual transferable quotes in a multiproduct common property industry this paper extends the method of virtual prices for quantity constraints to provide inverse derived demand functions for quotas and quota market equilibrium and pricing the approach is applied to evaluate the anticipated effects of a potential program of individual transferable quotas addressing the ill structured property rights and market failure of a multiproduct common property fishery the results indicate that individual transferable quotas on multiple products may not generate the desired rents or achieve biological objectives owing to limitations when joint products are regulated however an individual transferable quota on a single joint product may induce industry disinvestment and reduce overcapitalization

the dynamic efficiency costs of common pool resource exploitation we conduct the first empirical investigation of common pool resource users dynamic and strategic behavior at the micro level using real world data fishermen s strategies in a fully dynamic game account for latent resource dynamics and other players actions revealing the profit structure of the fishery we compare the fishermen s actual and socially optimal exploitation paths under a time specific vessel allocation policy and find a sizable dynamic externality individual fishermen respond to other users by exerting effort above the optimal level early in the season congestion is costly instantaneously but is beneficial in the long run because it partially offsets dynamic inefficiencies jel d24 q21 q22

efficiency estimation in a profit maximising model using flexible production function abstract this paper uses a flexible translog production function to estimate efficiency of 227 farms from west bengal india we consider estimation of technical and allocative inefficiencies using a profit maximising framework which accommodates both endogenous and exogenous inputs the maximum likelihood method of estimation developed in this paper is based on the production function and the first order conditions of profit maximisation farm specific technical and allocative inefficiencies are also estimated empirical results show that the mean level of technical efficiency is 75 46 while the best farm is 85 87 efficient technically so far as allocative efficiency is concerned the majority of the farms are found to be under users of the endogenous inputs viz fertiliser manure human and bullock labour

an analysis of the efficient production frontier in the fishery implications for enhanced fisheries management the transformation relationship between factor inputs and outputs the efficient production frontier epf contains important information for fisheries managers a directional technology distance function model of the harvesting technology is used to measure changes in the epf over time frontier shifts are summarized with input and output based frontier indicators that are interpreted as measures of bioeconomic productivity change the model is applied to the mid atlantic surf clam and ocean quahog fishery

resource rent in individual quota fisheries traditional fisheries management schemes generate incentives for vessels to maximize catch resulting in rent dissipation and overcapacity individual vessel quota management schemes change the incentives to maximize profit and have the potential to generate resource rent and reduce capacity an interesting question is whether it is the changed incentives due to individual quota or the capacity reduction due to transferability of individual quota that is most important in generating rent in this study a cost function approach is used to model and measure rent generated and potential rent in a fishery managed with individual vessel quotas

cost structure and capacity in the norwegian pelagic fisheries the parameters of the short run cost function are estimated for three vessel types taking part in the norwegian pelagic fisheries purse seine vessels trawlers and coastal vessels the generalized translog functional form is used estimates of returns to scale are calculated and the results indicate that there are substantial economies of scale in all vessel classes it is further investigated whether excess capacity varies with vessel size and age the analysis suggests increased quotas per vessel to avoid rent dissipation with the total allowable catch given the number of participating vessels must be reduced

application of the distance function to nonmarket valuation of environmental goods and services an illustrative example abstract this paper develops and implements a unique formulation of a household production model in that technology is characterized as a distance function the properties of the distance function allow for the derivation of shadow prices for the inputs and outputs associated with household production which can be applied to the problem of valuing nonmarket goods or activities the approach requires only one input to or output of household production to bear a price the derivation of shadow prices for all other household inputs outputs follows from the properties of the distance function i demonstrate the approach using data on the waste management activities of a sample of households from marietta georgia and by calculating shadow prices for the nonmarket activity of recycling

explaining non compliance in the norwegian coastal cod fishery an application of the multinomial logit establishing motive is central to the analysis of criminal behaviour this article analyses the range of motives for noncompliant behaviour among coastal cod fishermen a multinomial logit model is employed to analyse the reasons that underlie various motives the four motives compared in this study are economic technological and social and motives caused by bureaucracy and legitimacy problems the economic motive is found to be most important for coastal fishermen however the cross sectional data indicate that motives vary with fishing gear vessel length and fishermen s age the results indicate that identifying motives for noncompliant behaviour is not straightforward but is important for reducing the extent of infringements of the regulations fishermen who use gill net seine and long line for example are more often motivated to noncompliance by technical problems and bureaucracy than hand jig fishers the study suggests that in order to prevent noncompliance behaviour the authorities manageme

consumption taxes and economic efficiency with idiosyncratic wage shocks fundamental tax reform is examined in an overlapping generations model in which heterogeneous agents face idiosyncratic wage shocks and longevity uncertainty a progressive income tax is replaced with a flat consumption tax if idiosyncratic wage shocks are insurable i e no risk this reform improves interim efficiency a result consistent with the previous literature but if more realistically wage shocks are uninsurable this reform reduces efficiency even though national wealth and output increase over the entire transition path this efficiency loss in large part stems from reduced intragenerational risk sharing that was previously provided by the progressive tax system