James E. Wilen

Economic impacts of marine reserves: the importance of spatial behavior

Abstract Marine biologists have shown virtually unqualified support for managing fisheries with marine reserves, signifying a new resource management paradigm that recognizes the importance of spatial processes in exploited systems. Most modeling of reserves employs simplifying assumptions about the behavior of fishermen in response to spatial closures. We show that a realistic depiction of fishermen behavior dramatically alters the conclusions about reserves. We develop, estimate, and calibrate an integrated bioeconomic model of the sea urchin fishery in northern California and use it to simulate reserve policies. Our behavioral model shows how economic incentives determine both participation and location choices of fishermen. We compare simulations with behavioral response to biological modeling that presumes that effort is spatially uniform and unresponsive to economic incentives. We demonstrate that optimistic conclusions about reserves may be an artifact of simplifying assumptions that ignore economic behavior.

Principles for the Conservation of Wild Living Resources

We describe broadly applicable principles for the conservation of wild living resources and mechanisms for their implementation. These principles were engendered from three starting points. First, a set of principles for the conservation of wild living resources (Holt and Talbot 1978) required reexamination and updating. Second, those principles lacked mechanisms for implementation and consequently were not as effective as they might have been. Third, all conservation problems have scientific, economic, and social aspects, and although the mix may vary from problem to problem, all three aspects must be included in problem solving. We illustrate the derivation of, and amplify the meaning of, the principles, and discuss mechanisms for their implementation. The principles are: Principle I. Maintenance of healthy populations of wild living resources in perpetuity is inconsistent with unlimited growth of human consumption of and demand for those resources. Principle II. The goal of conservation should be to secure present and future options by maintaining biological diversity at genetic, species, population, and ecosystem levels; as a general rule neither the resource nor other components of the ecosystem should be perturbed beyond natural boundaries of variation. Principle III. Assessment of the possible ecological and sociological effects of resource use should precede both proposed use and proposed restriction or expansion of ongoing use of a resource. Principle IV. Regulation of the use of living resources must be based on understanding the structure and dynamics of the ecosystem of which the resource is a part and must take into account the ecological and sociological influences that directly and indirectly affect resource use. Principle V. The full range of knowledge and skills from the natural and social sciences must be brought to bear on conservation problems. Principle VI. Effective conservation requires understanding and taking account of the motives, interests, and values of all users and stakeholders, but not by simply averaging their positions. Principle VII. Effective conservation requires communication that is interactive, reciprocal, and continuous. Mechanisms for implementation of the principles are discussed.

An Examination of Fishing Location Choice in the Pink Shrimp Fishery

This article analyzes fishing location choices made by pink shrimp (Pandalus jordani) fishermen fishing off the coast of northern California. Data were gathered for 17 commercial vessels making 3000 net sets over a season. A simple multiplechoice logit model was used to examine whether recent information on success in various regions aids in explaining location choice. Results suggest that fishermen do account for economic factors in a manner consistent with economic theories of choice.

Water Markets and Water Quality

In addition to improving the allocative efficiency of water use, water markets may reduce irrigation-related water quality problems. This potential benefit is examined with a nonlinear programming model developed to simulate agricultural decision-making in a drainage problem area in Californias San Joaquin Valley. Results indicate that a 30% drainage goal is achievable through improvements in irrigation practices and changes in cropping patterns induced by a water market. Although water markets will not generally achieve a least-cost solution, they may be a practical alternative to economically efficient, but informationally intensive, environmental policies such as Pigouvian taxes.

Bioeconomics of renewable resource use

Publisher Summary One of the characteristics of natural resource economics that makes it both interesting is its heavy reliance on noneconomic and economic concepts. Over the past two decades the field has expanded both in breadth of coverage and also in depth of conceptual development so that a well-rounded natural resource economist has a considerable knowledge not only about sophisticated techniques in economics but also in several other outside fields. The chapter discusses the economic concepts that appear to be central to analyzing biological situations typically encountered. The concepts have been drawn from capital theory and cover two classes of problems: a continuous investment/disinvestment problem and a point-input point-output problem where timing of a single action is important. The chapter reviews relevant concepts from biology that affect the nature of the corresponding bioeconomic problem. It focuses on the range of population growth mechanisms one sees in natural systems and the individual characteristics that have evolved to produce such population mechanisms. Finally, it concludes by discussing likely directions of future research.

Public policy and private incentives for livestock disease control

This article presents a dynamic bioeconomic model of livestock disease control that is unique in its integration of disease dynamics, inter‐species interaction, control‐induced migration, and individual optimising behaviour. Examination of the first‐order conditions highlights why profit‐maximising producers cannot be expected to eradicate disease. Results from an empirical application of the model confirm that the current mix of policies to control bovine tuberculosis in New Zealand is achieving lower levels of prevalence than would prevail in the absence of a national strategy. These policies do, however, appear to remove some of the individual incentive to control disease.

Social norms as solutions

Policies may influence large-scale behavioral tipping Climate change, biodiversity loss, antibiotic resistance, and other global challenges pose major collective action problems: A group benefits from a certain action, but no individual has sufficient incentive to act alone. Formal institutions, e.g., laws and treaties, have helped address issues like ozone depletion, lead pollution, and acid rain. However, formal institutions are not always able to enforce collectively desirable outcomes. In such cases, informal institutions, such as social norms, can be important. If conditions are right, policy can support social norm changes, helping address even global problems. To judge when this is realistic, and what role policy can play, we discuss three crucial questions: Is a tipping point likely to exist, such that vicious cycles of socially damaging behavior can potentially be turned into virtuous ones? Can policy create tipping points where none exist? Can policy push the system past the tipping point?

TURFs and ITQs: Collective vs. Individual Decision Making

While most of the attention in the scientific and policy literature on rights-based institutions has been devoted to Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs), there are alternatives that involve different configurations of use rights. One such alternative is a space-based option commonly referred to as Territorial Use Rights Fisheries (TURFs). TURFs have been utilized in island fisheries off Southeast Asia for decades, and they have been well studied, particularly by anthropologists and sociologists. This paper discusses case studies of TURF organizations in Japan and Chile from an economics perspective. We discuss the historical origins of each system, outline the legal and institutional structures of the systems, and then discuss how each system manages nearshore coastal resources. We discuss similarities and differences across the many specific collective management structures adopted by Japanese and Chilean TURF organizations. We then discuss how outcomes differ from what might emerge under ITQs.

Common Property Resources and the Dynamics of Overexploitation: The Case of the North Pacific Fur Seal

INTRODUCTION The use of the simple theory of competitive industry behavior to explain common property resource misuse is certainly one of the richest applications of the theory yet attempted.With a minimum number of assumptions, it is possible to derive some particularly illuminating and useful hypotheses regarding several important aspects of industry behavior. For example, in the case of fisheries (or other self-regenerating open-access resources) theory indicates that entry of mobile variable factors (e.g., fishermen, fishing vessels) will proceed well beyond the numbers sufficient for efficient use of the fish stock. The reason, of course, is that no one in an open-access industry is able to exercise entrepreneurial control over the application of variable resources to the fixed resource. Under such circumstances, variable resources will be attracted until the values of average, and not marginal, products are equated to wage and interest rates. In a fishery, entry of men and vessels will proceed until all potential rents to the fish stock have been exhausted, leaving the industry and species in a sub-optimal “bioeconomic” equilibrium in which a sustainable harvest may be taken, but with a fish stock that is too low and amounts of capital and labor that are too high in terms of efficiency. These results on the characteristics of the common property equilibrium position have been supplemented by Vernon Smith [1968, 1969] to include some important hypotheses about the dynamics of common property resource overexploitation. As Smith demonstrates, the transi-

Research Trends and Opportunities in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics

The research questions and topics most likely to emerge in the near term future are assessed. A common theme is that policy issues will be an important driving force, as has generally been true in the past. More specifically, future theoretical advances are expected to occur in the treatment of uncertainty, the incorporation of stock service flows into natural resource analysis, and the incorporation of institutional considerations into models of resource exploitation. Research on valuation is expected to remain vigorous, primarily in the testing of basic assumptions and reconciliation of existing inconsistencies. Opportunities in renewable resource economics center on the incorporation of richer behavioral and technological detail in the general frameworks that already exist. A better understanding of what drives technology, and how environmental agreements can be negotiated and enforced among sovereign nations, are two topics likely to shape future research on global externalities. Finally, questions related to spatial aspects of natural resource use, and matters of land use more generally, seem likely to emerge as important topics on the professions future research agenda.