Ikerne del Valle

Fishing effort validation and substitution possibilities among components: the case study of the VIII division European anchovy fishery

Command and control regulation programmes, particularly input constraints, typically fail to achieve stated objectives, because fishermen may substitute unregulated for regulated inputs. It is, thus, essential to have an understanding of the internal structure of production technology. A primal formulation is used to estimate a translog production function at the vessels level that includes fishing effort and fishermans skill. The flexibility of the selected functional permits the analysis of the substitution possibilities among inputs by estimating the elasticity of substitution with no prior constraints. Particular attention is paid to the empirical validation of fishing effort as an aggregate input, which implies either, the acceptance of the joint hypothesis that inputs making up effort are weakly separable from the inputs out of the subgroup or considering that effort is an intermediate input produced by a non-separable two stage technology. Cross-sectional data from the Spanish purse seine fleet operating in the VIII Division European anchovy fishery provide evidence of limited input substitution possibilities among the inputs making up the empirically validated fishing effort translog micro-production function.

Chapter 9 Participation

Publisher Summary The traditional view of public intervention theory placed the regulator in the role of a mere specialist intermediary among collective wills and their technical and scientific transformation into practical public policies. Public action was considered absolutely neutral and technocratic. Thus, social capital and legitimacy was always based on the fact that optimal policies could be developed, using totally objective criteria, in which neutrality had to be guaranteed by the impartiality of the procedures used in the process. Critics, and their evidence, opposed to the traditional view have generated new proposals to incorporate participation into models to explain the public policy-making process. From that time, an inclusive approach has prevailed among the social agents and stakeholders participating in the different levels of decision-making. The knowledge and the quality of the inputs to develop scientific models and applied results are very important issues when managing resources in a reasonable way and this is related to the participation and expertise of scientists and stakeholders. When the views of stakeholders are introduced into the problem-solving process, the scientific formulation of the issues can be elaborated with significant inputs but with new complexities. To put this participation into practice a system of regional-scale, decentralized management units is operational within the European Union (EU). They are known as Regional Advisory Councils (RACs).

Chapter 1 Introduction: The knowledge base as process

Publisher Summary This chapter presents information needed to make fisheries management decisions. The knowledge base for fisheries presented in the chapter includes biological information of fish stocks, economic information of fisheries, and social information of the requirements of effective fisheries governance. Taking the ecosystem approach to fisheries management requires including ecological information of many kinds while the precautionary approach requires treating all of the information as being to some degree uncertain. The role that the knowledge base plays has undergone a profound shift in the recent years because the overall understanding of management has itself shifted. Responses to the current fisheries management challenge, indeed crisis, require new ways of thinking, more comprehensive and flexible scientific models, and innovative ideas on how those models can be used in the development of management strategies.

Bioeconomic diversity dynamics of a marine ecosystem

ABSTRACT This paper models the bio-economic diversity dynamics of a marine ecosystem made up by its entire commercial fish species and, from the fitted model, obtains a quantitative measure of its resilience to disturbance in terms of recovery time after a shock. Such shocks might be produced by both, downturns in catches and/or prices related to changing regulatory and environmental conditions. To that end, monthly time series of bio-economic diversity indices will be used and the framework of a mixed cyclical ARFIMA joint with a GARCH type heteroscedaticity model will be explored to analyse the dynamic properties of such indices and, based on the estimated impulse response functions (IRF) to measure the effects and duration of a unitary random shock or disturbance. One of our findings is that bio-economic diversity is a mean-reverting process with an estimated recovery time between 7 and 10 years.

Chapter 5 Financial instruments

Publisher Summary Financial instruments are used to improve the working environment and the safety conditions of exposed population groups and branches. The use of financial instruments in trade entails distortions and welfare losses, and is considered harmful as it leads to an increase in inefficient domestic production, at the expense of a decrease in the supply shares of efficient foreign production. These types of financial instruments are the main subjects of the negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO). If the fishing industry is protected in the same way by the use of financial instruments this leads to further overexploitation of the fish stocks (lower supply) of the domestic country, and less overexploitation (higher supply) in the exporting countries. This chapter focuses on financial instruments that have environmental effects for example, those that influence fish stocks. In order to examine the consequences of such instruments, it is necessary to obtain information of the functioning of bio-economic systems.