The British Columbia halibut fishery provides a natural experiment of the effects of "privatizing the commons". Using firm-level data from the fishery two years before private harvesting rights were introduced, the year they were implemented and three years afterwards, a stochastic frontier is estimated to test for changes in technical, allocative and economic efficiency. Despite some improvement in short-run measures of cost efficiency, overall the fishing fleet still remains well below the best practice frontier. The relatively few short-run efficiency gains are attributed to deficiencies in the property right and the possibility that fishers may require several years to optimize their operations. By contrast, the results indicate an immediate and significant increase in producer surplus and unit rents which are directly attributable to the privatization. The results suggest that if the full benefits of privatization are to be realized, careful attention must be given to properly specifying all the characteristics of the property right.
This paper looks at the characteristics that explain research productivity in a cross section of academic economists. From a sample of 150 economists, we obtained data on a range of human capital variables, teaching loads and research funding. The results suggest that human capital variables, particularly the grade of honours and the nature and location of the PhD., are especially important in explaining a quality‐weighted research output measure. Teaching loads are also significant. In particular, we find that a 10 per cent increase in the number of teaching hours may reduce research output by as much as 20 per cent, whereas a 10 per cent increase in the number of grants held per year may raise output per year by as much as 15 per cent.
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