Dale Squires

Private Property and Economic Efficiency: A Study of a Common-Pool Resource

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.

A Call for Deep-Ocean Stewardship

The precautionary approach and collaborative governance must balance deep-ocean use and protection. Covering more than half the planet, the deep ocean sequesters atmospheric CO2 and recycles major nutrients; is predicted to hold millions of yet-to-be-described species; and stores mind-boggling quantities of untapped energy resources, precious metals, and minerals (1). It is an immense, remote biome, critical to the health of the planet and human well-being. The deep ocean (defined here as below a typical continental shelf break, >200 m) faces mounting challenges as technological advances—including robotics, imaging, and structural engineering—greatly improve access. We recommend a move from a frontier mentality of exploitation and single-sector management to a precautionary system that balances use of living marine resources, energy, and minerals from the deep ocean with maintenance of a productive and healthy marine environment, while improving knowledge and collaboration.

Reconciling Biodiversity with Fishing: A Holistic Strategy for Pacific Sea Turtle Recovery

Recovery of sea turtle populations requires addressing: multiple sources of mortality; nonmarket, diffuse benefits with costs localized on the poor; and a transboundary resource with incomplete jurisprudence, markets, and institutions. Holistic recovery strategies include: beach conservation protecting nesting females, their eggs, and critical breeding habitat to maximize hatchling production; enhanced at-sea survival of turtles on the high seas and in commercial coastal fisheries; and reduced artisanal coastal fisheries mortality of turtles. The traditional approach of focusing long-term sustained conservation efforts on the nesting beaches has by itself led to increases in several sea turtle populations. However, current conservation is inadequate to reverse declines in other cases such as the critically endangered leatherback populations in the Pacific. This article discusses policy instruments comprising a holistic recovery strategy that reconciles fishing with biodiversity conservation.

Technical efficiency in the Malaysian gill net artisanal fishery

Artisanal fishing communities include some of the poorest fishers in Malaysia. The paper presents the first technical efficiency study, whichfinds that artisanal fishers are poor, but enjoy a higher level of technical efficiency than found in the other Malaysian gill net fisheries. It suggests that targeted development assistance to the harvesting sector may be better directed to other priorities in artisanal fishing communities.

Conservation and management of transnational tuna fisheries.

Part I. Introduction. 1 Introduction ( Robin Allen, James Joseph, Dale Squires, and Elizabeth Stryjewski ). 2 Addressing the Problem of Excess Fishing Capacity in Tuna Fisheries ( James Joseph, Dale Squires, William Bayliff, and Theodore Groves ). 3 Property and Use Rights in Fisheries ( Dale Squires ). 4 Rights-Based Management in Transnational Tuna Fisheries ( Robin Allen, William Bayliff, James Joseph, and Dale Squires ). 5 The Benefits and Costs of Transformation of Open Access on the High Seas ( Robin Allen, William Bayliff, James Joseph, and Dale Squires ). Part II. Rights-Based Management, 6 International Fisheries Law and the Transferability of Quota: Principles and Precedents ( Andrew Serdy ). 7 Can Rights Put It Right? Industry Initiatives to Resolve Overcapacity Issues: Observations from a Boat Deck and a Managers Desk ( Daryl Sykes ). 8 Rights-Based Management of Tuna Fisheries: Lessons from the Assignment of Property Rights on the Western US Frontier ( Gary Libecap ). 9 The Economics of Allocation in Tuna Regional Fishery Management Organizations (RFMOs) ( R. Quentin Grafton, Rognvaldur Hannesson, Bruce Shallard, Daryl Sykes, and Joseph Terry ). 10 Allocating Fish across Jurisdictions ( Jon Van Dyke ). 11 Buybacks in Transnational Fisheries ( Dale Squires, James Joseph, and Theodore Groves ). 12 Limited Access in Transnational Tuna Fisheries ( Brian Hallman, Scott Barrett, Raymond Clarke, James Joseph, and Dale Squires ). Part III. Bycatch. 13 Individual Transferable Quotas for Bycatches: Lessons for the Tuna-Dolphin Issue ( Rognvaldur Hannesson ). 14 Incentives to Address Bycatch Issues ( Heidi Gjertsen, Martin Hall, and Dale Squires ). Part IV. Politics, Enforcement, and Compliance. 15 Politics for Use Rights in Tuna RFMOs ( Frank Alcock ). 16 Flags of Convenience and Property Rights on the High Seas ( Elizabeth DeSombre ). 17 Japanese Policies, Ocean Law, and the Tuna Fisheries: Sustainability Goals, the IUU Issue, and Overcapacity ( Katherine J. Mengerink, Harry N. Scheiber, and Yann-Huie Song ). 18 Quasi-Property Rights and the Effectiveness of Atlantic Tuna Management ( D. G. Webster ).

Cost-effectiveness of alternative conservation strategies with application to the Pacific leatherback turtle.

Although holistic conservation addressing all sources of mortality for endangered species or stocks is the preferred conservation strategy, limited budgets require a criterion to prioritize conservation investments. We compared the cost-effectiveness of nesting site and at-sea conservation strategies for Pacific leatherback turtles (Dermochelys coriacea). We sought to determine which conservation strategy or mix of strategies would produce the largest increase in population growth rate per dollar. Alternative strategies included protection of nesters and their eggs at nesting beaches in Indonesia, gear changes, effort restrictions, and caps on turtle takes in the Hawaiian (U.S.A.) longline swordfish fishery, and temporal and area closures in the California (U.S.A.) drift gill net fishery. We used a population model with a biological metric to measure the effects of conservation alternatives. We normalized all effects by cost to prioritize those strategies with the greatest biological effect relative to its economic cost. We used Monte Carlo simulation to address uncertainty in the main variables and to calculate probability distributions for cost-effectiveness measures. Nesting beach protection was the most cost-effective means of achieving increases in leatherback populations. This result creates the possibility of noncompensatory bycatch mitigation, where high-bycatch fisheries invest in protecting nesting beaches. An example of this practice is U.S. processors of longline tuna and California drift gill net fishers that tax themselves to finance low-cost nesting site protection. Under certain conditions, fisheries interventions, such as technologies that reduce leatherback bycatch without substantially decreasing target species catch, can be cost-effective. Reducing bycatch in coastal areas where bycatch is high, particularly adjacent to nesting beaches, may be cost-effective, particularly, if fisheries in the area are small and of little commercial value.

Controlling Excess Capacity in Common-Pool Resource Industries: The Transition from Input to Output Controls

Overcapacity is a major problem in common-pool resources. Regulators increasingly turn from limited entry to individual transferable use rights to address overcapacity. Using individual vessel data from before and after the introduction of individual harvest rights into a fishery, the paper investigates how characteristics of rights, scale of operations and transition period affect changes in individual and fleet capacity utilisation and excess capacity. The results indicate that individual harvest rights in both theory and practice offer the potential to address the problem of overcapacity in common-pool resources currently managed with limited-entry regulations.

Where the Land Meets the Sea: Integrated Sustainable Fisheries Development and Artisanal Fishing

Artisanal fishing communities include some of the poorest of the poor. In the past 40 years, strategies that have targeted the harvesting sector of such communities have often failed to address their chronic problems of poverty. Using data from gill net fishers in Malaysia, the paper presents the first technical efficiency study of an artisanal fishery and finds that artisanal fishers are poor but technically efficient. The results from the study and the experiences of other artisanal fisheries are used to advance a development strategy for artisanal fisheries called integrated sustainable fisheries development (ISFD).

Will a catch share for whales improve social welfare

We critique a proposal to use catch shares to manage transboundary wildlife resources with potentially high non-extractive values, and we focus on the case of whales. Because whales are impure public goods, a policy that fails to capture all nonmarket benefits (due to free riding) could lead to a suboptimal outcome. Even if free riding were overcome, whale shares would face four implementation challenges. First, a whale share could legitimize the international trade in whale meat and expand the whale meat market. Second, a legal whale trade creates monitoring and enforcement challenges similar to those of organizations that manage highly migratory species such as tuna. Third, a whale share could create a new political economy of management that changes incentives and increases costs for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to achieve the current level of conservation. Fourth, a whale share program creates new logistical challenges for quota definition and allocation regardless of whether the market for whale products expands or contracts. Each of these issues, if left unaddressed, could result in lower overall welfare for society than under the status quo.

A contract-theoretic model of conservation agreements

We model conservation agreements using contractual equilibrium, a concept introduced by Miller and Watson (2010) to model dynamic relationships with renegotiation. The setting takes the form of a repeated principal-agent problem, where the principal must pay to observe a noisy signal of the agent’s effort. Lacking a strong external enforcement system, the parties rely on self-enforcement for their relational contract. We characterize equilibrium play (including how punishments and rewards are structured) and we show how the parties’ relative bargaining powers affect their ability to sustain cooperation over time. We argue that the model captures important features of real conservation agreements and reveals the ingredients required for successful agreements.