This paper introduces an overlapping generations model to explore the interplay between economic growth, the environment, and endogenous technology adoption. Considering an economy with physical capital and publicly funded human capital, the analytical framework extends Prieur and Bréchet (2013, Macroeconomic Dynamics 17, 1135–1157) by incorporating the endogenous technology choice mechanism from Umezuki and Yokoo (2019, Journal of Economic Dynamics & Control 100, 164–175). The analysis focuses on how the choice of capital-intensive technologies impacts environmental dynamics. The model reveals complex equilibrium dynamics, driven by a core trade-off between individuals’ resource allocation on consumption versus environmental protection and firms’ technology decisions.

Constrained econometric techniques hamper investigations of disease prevalence and income risks in the shrimp industry. We employ an econometric model and machine learning (ML) to reduce model restrictions and improve understanding of the influence of diseases and climate on income and disease risks. An interview of 534 farmers with the models enables the discernment of factors influencing shrimp income and disease risks. ML complemented the Just-Pope production model, and the partial dependency plots show nonlinear relationships between income, disease prevalence, and risk factors. Econometric and ML models generated complementary information to understand income and disease prevalence risk factors.

We study management decisions made jointly and independently by countries affected by an invasive species that is also a profitable fishery. The Red King Crab, introduced in Russian waters of the Barents Sea, spread into Norwegian waters. Management by Russia and Norway reflects differing markets and invasion damages. Our spatial dynamic bioeconomic model evaluates management of the crab and optimal game strategies integrating varied incentives from market prices, ecosystem values, and spatial connectivity. Our empirical application characterizes stock changes responding to different model components. This research shows economic and ecological trade-offs in Arctic waters with differing net benefits for sovereign stakeholders.

Governments offer resource user rights, such as individual and collective agricultural land rights, fishing quotas, and territorial user rights in marine activities, to induce economic development and efficient resource use. Yet, user rights and improved incomes do not always lead to project uptake, as in rural-rural migration. Marine user rights may differ from land tenure rights, especially when rights are individual or collective. We explore household survey data from Chile about participation in projects linking marine resource activities with user rights across payoff levels and commute/relocation ‘disruption’ costs. Households are more likely to participate in projects with low disruption costs and high incomes, yet many households reject lucrative projects. The household's existing user rights and the project's activity–rights pairs affect project participation levels, with differences across collective and individually-held rights. These results inform policy aimed at increasing incomes and resource use efficiency through marine resource projects with user rights.

When every individual’s effort imposes negative externalities, self-interested behavior leads to socially excessive effort. To curb these excesses when effort cannot be monitored, competing output-sharing partnerships can form. With the right-sized groups, aggregate effort falls to the socially optimal level. We investigate this theory experimentally and find that while it makes correct qualitative predictions, there are systematic quantitative deviations, always in the direction of the socially optimal investment. Using data on subjects’ conjectures of each other’s behavior we investigate altruism, conformity and extremeness aversion as possible explanations. We show that deviations are consistent with both altruism and conformity (but not extremeness aversion).

In this paper, we consider four scenarios for economic optimal management of a fisheries resource by a high sea and coastal fleet segment. These scenarios differ with respect to whether a common or two separate fish stocks are considered and whether the profit from land-based processing is included. The model is parametrized using the Greenland halibut fishery on the west coast of Greenland as an empirical case. For this fishery, we show that the relative ranking of the optimal high sea industry harvest and profit compared to the coastal industry harvest and profit depends on the chosen scenario. When comparing the scenarios for optimal management and the actual situation, we find that the fish stock tends to be overexploited.

Most decisions involving risk are not taken in isolation. In addition to the risk from that decision, other independent, so-called ‘background’ risks, are considered. Our research adds to the growing evidence that this background risk influences risk-taking. We report results from a repeated lab-in-the-field investment task with Senegalese fishers in the presence of background risk related to their fishing income and their health. Our measure of background risk is the monthly wind condition. Without controls, we find that fishers act on average intemperately. Adding controls, we find that the impact of background risk on risk-taking—measured as the investment in the investment task—depends on the boat size of the fishers. When dividing the sample according to wealth, we find temperate behavior for the relatively poorer group and intemperate behavior that depends on boat lengths for the relatively richer group. Our results show the interrelations between background risk and context factors.

This paper presents a pedagogical exercise to explore the economics of price-based fisheries bycatch. In the exercise students experience the economic incentives that lead to bycatch due to highgrading; the discarding of low-value fish. We first discuss existing fisheries economics pedagogical activities and how our exercise is distinct. We then identify over forty economics, environmental studies, geography, management, and philosophy courses where the exercise could be played. Next, we describe the game and share results and student feedback. Finally, we provide discussion prompts and extensions to illustrate how incentives and policies can change fishing behavior to lead to sustainable fisheries.

Small-scale fisheries (SSFs) are significant for poverty alleviation, but are threatened by over-exploitation and climate change effects such as drastic drops in regrowth rates. How will fishers adapt? To shed light on this, we ran a common-pool resource experiment with SSF fishers in Thailand. Our results show that groups confronted with a potential abrupt drop in the regrowth rate are more likely to form cooperative agreements compared to groups not confronted with such a drop, which theory cannot predict. However, groups that form cooperative agreements do not necessarily manage the resource efficiently; many groups under-exploit. Over-exploitation is driven by individual characteristics, e.g., if individuals can diversify income, and if they are born outside the village. We conclude that more systematic exploration of the role of socio-economic factors, and how these factors interact with ecological conditions facing fishers, are needed. Our work can be seen as one step in this direction.

This article uses meta-regression analysis to examine variation in willingness to pay (WTP) for farm-raised seafood and aquaculture products. We measure the WTP premiums that consumers have for common product attributes and examine how WTP varies systematically across study design elements, populations of interest, and sample characteristics. Based on metadata from 45 studies, the meta-regression analysis indicates that WTP estimates differ significantly with the availability of attributes such as domestic and environmental certification, but also with sample income and gender representation.

The European Union provides firm support to the maritime sector to reach the policy objectives in the Common Fisheries Policy. This paper analyzes to what extent the investment support to aquaculture and fish processing firms in Sweden increases firm investment activity. By doing so, the paper also quantifies the amount of investments that would have been undertaken also without support (deadweight losses, DWL). The results show that the support increases investment in aquaculture with a factor of 0.65, thus with a DWL of 35%. The corresponding number for fish processing is a DWL of 77%.

This study aims to assess the market potential for organically farmed shrimp. The rank-ordered logit model was employed to investigate consumer perceptions; the findings reveal that consumers prefer organic shrimp from mariculture, and inland-farmed shrimp to the coastal version. The willingness to pay (WTP) for conventional shrimp amongst consumers with low knowledge is less than that for organic shrimp amongst highly knowledgeable ones. In addition, the lower WTP for organic shrimp compared with safe shrimp amongst those with a medium knowledge level shows that the organically farmed shrimp market is lagging behind due to limited knowledge and confusion.

Share contracts are the dominant remuneration system in artisanal fisheries. Introducing regulations based on collective use rights may affect the way profits are distributed. The literature on the effect of regulatory reform on factor income distribution, however, is scarce. In this paper, we look at differences in the implementation of the Extractive Artisanal Regime in Chilean hake artisanal fisheries to test its effect on share contracts. We estimated a switching regression model using census data to calculate the average treatment effect. Our results show that crewmembers in communities regulated by some form of collective use rights receive, on average, 6 per cent more of total net incomes compared to those regulated by a limited access with global quota regime. Differences in the relation between crew size and labor rewards, as well as in the negotiating power of crewmembers under different regimes, may explain the results.

An issue for generic advertising in agricultural markets with unregulated supplies is that the promotion-induced demand shift could lead to a supply response that substantially attenuates the price effects of the promotion. For the generic promotion of fish exports, however, the concern is generally just the opposite—the possibility that extensive government supply controls could render promotion efforts to expand export sales ineffectual due to little or no supply response. This study considers the effects of government whitefish (cod, haddock, and others) supply controls on the effectiveness of the Norwegian Seafood Council (NSC) whitefish export promotion program. We use an econometric simulation model to measure the effectiveness and returns to NSC whitefish export promotion under a range of possible export supply control conditions. Results indicate that effective supply control maximizes the return to promotion and that ineffectual supply control imposes a potentially large opportunity cost on the promoting industry.

This article analyzes a general equilibrium growth model with overlapping generations and (production-induced) environmental degradation. Individuals react to environmental damages through mitigation or adaptation. In the former case, they reduce production and its environmental impact. In the latter, they do not tackle the causes of the problem but rather its consequences (i.e., the wellbeing loss due to environmental degradation) by increasing defensive expenditures. Despite its simplicity, the model can generate different long-term outcomes: convergence to a stationary state following a unique trajectory or local/global indeterminacy. In the last scenario, initial conditions (history) and individual expectations matter and the model can generate coordination failures and endogenous fluctuations. Results cast doubt on solutions to environmental problems relying on the role of individual behavior change or adaptation.

Interest payments based on income flows are a common feature of informal loans. Such so-called ’interlinked loans’ can be seen as insurance against very low disposable incomes, as interest payments are lowest when income turns out to be low. This paper examines whether interlinked loans indeed contain an insurance premium and how those premia are determined. A simple theoretical model predicts that interest rates of interlinked loans increase with income volatility when insurance premia exist. Based on data from a small-scale fishery in India, calculations show that, on average, lenders receive 25 per cent of the income, which corresponds to an average interest rate of 49 per cent p.a. A panel data analysis confirms theoretical predictions that interlinked loans contain an insurance component paid by the borrowers.

Recreational saltwater anglers from the mid-Atlantic through the Gulf of Mexico commonly target red drum. Due to concerns about overharvesting within South Carolina coupled with regional management actions, South Carolina explored the technical feasibility of stocking hatchery-produced juvenile red drum as a technique to augment the abundance of South Carolina stock. In order to assess a continued program, in 2005 a mail survey was used to collect data for estimating the economic benefits with the contingent valuation method. The theoretical validity of willingness to pay was assessed by comparison to the value of a change in red drum fishing trips that would result from the program. Benefits were compared to estimated, explicit stocking costs. We illustrate how a certainty recode approach can be used in sensitivity analysis. The net present values (NPVs) for the stocking program are positive suggesting that the program would have been economically efficient relative to no program.

Several studies indicate an integrated global market for salmon. However, there is increasing evidence of market segmentation for various seafood species. A disease crisis in Chile that reduced production by two-thirds provides a strong market shock that can shed light on how strongly integrated the salmon market is. Our results indicate that Chilean producers changed the product mix and export markets as a result of the disease shock. Yet, the relative prices remained constant, indicating a high degree of market integration. Moreover, Chilean prices are endogenous to the Norwegian price, indicating that prices are determined at the global market.

We administered an online choice experiment to a sample of U.S. raw-oyster consumers to identify factors influencing preferences for Gulf of Mexico oysters, determined the extent of preference heterogeneity, and estimated marginal willingness to pay for specific varieties and other key attributes. Results indicate significant preference heterogeneity among select varieties, with non-Gulf respondents estimated to require a price discount on Gulf oyster varieties on the order of $3–$6/half dozen. Gulf respondents were found to be less sensitive to oyster variety, and estimated to be willing to pay a price premium only for select Gulf varieties on the order of $0–$3/half dozen.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries has conducted several buyback programs to reduce harvesting capacity in fisheries. These programs have attempted to maximize capacity reduction given a fixed budget. However, restructuring issues have not been considered. We explore the possibility of satisfying three different buyback objectives. We examine the black sea bass trap fishery and determine the number of vessels given different allowable catch levels and objectives of maximizing technical efficiency, capacity utilization, and vessels in the fishery. We find considerable variation in the number of vessels allowed to remain in the fishery given the different objectives.