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Fisheries management benefits from the contribution of several academic disciplines, each with their own perspectives, concerns and solutions. In this essay we argue that the contribution of biology, economics, sociology and other relevant disciplines to fisheries would be improved if they originated from broader, more integrated analytical perspectives that are attuned to the empirical realities of fisheries management. Today, disciplinary boundaries narrow the perspectives of fisheries management, creating tunnel vision and standardized technical fixes to complex and diverse management problems. Having worked separately and together for a number of years in fisheries research and consultancy in many parts of the world we, as a group of biologists, economists and sociologists, feel that the time to rid ourselves from disciplinary dogmatism is long overdue. We claim that improvements in fisheries management will be realized not through the promotion of technical fixes but instead by embracing and responding to the complexity of the management problem.2

Pressures being exerted on the ocean ecosystems through overfishing, pollution, and environmental and climate change are increasing. Six core principles are proposed to guide governance and use of ocean resources and to promote sustainability. Examples of governance structures that embody these principles are given.

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We examine household saving in the context of a prescriptive model. Using Survey of Consumer Finances data sets in the 1995–2004 period, 57% of households reported spending less than income. Many effects in the multivariate analysis are consistent with a prescriptive model. We discuss other effects in terms of possible differences in the ability to plan or the accuracy of reporting by the respondent. Young households are more likely to report saving than older households. Black households are less likely to report saving than white households. Single female households are less likely to report saving than single male households.

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We identify and present original analyses of four methodological issues related to using Survey of Consumer Finances data sets and illustrate these issues with recent articles published in this journal. The issues are recognizing that the respondent is not necessarily the household head, reporting race and ethnicity in conformity with Survey of Consumer Finances and federal standards, using the repeated‐imputation inference method to combine the five implicates in each survey year’s data set, and discussing the use of weighted or unweighted data in multivariate analysis. We found a considerable variation in how authors dealt with these issues, which could hinder replication or comparison of research results. Authors and reviewers should consider methodological issues related to the Survey of Consumer Finances more carefully.

The purpose of this study was to examine associations between saving goals and saving behavior from a perspective of Maslow's Hierarchy. Using 1998-2007 Surveys of Consumer Finance datasets, we analyzed responses given to an open ended saving reason question, and categorized responses into six saving goals. The retirement/security goal was the most frequently mentioned, and the self-actualization goal was the least frequently mentioned. We tested two models to ascertain whether the order of response differed in the likelihood of saving, measured as whether households spent less than income. Model 1 tested the effects of whether particular goals were given as the first response to the open-ended question, and Model 2 tested the effects of whether particular goals were given as any response. In both analyses, self actualization and retirement/security had the strongest associations with saving behavior.