Voluntary Approaches to Transitioning from Competitive Fisheries to Rights-Based Management: Bringing the Field into the Lab

Abstract

This paper describes a novel experiment designed to examine how rent dissipation may occur in fisheries in which the right to participate is limited and fishermen compete amongst themselves for shares of an exogenous total allowable catch. We demonstrate that rent dissipation may occur through multiple mechanisms, and that the heterogeneity of fishermen has important implications for how rent dissipation occurs and the extent to which different individuals may benefit from the implementation of rights-based management. We apply this approach to investigate the concept of voluntary rights-based management under which managers divide the total allowable catch between two separate fisheries, and fishermen may choose between fishing for a guaranteed individual harvest quota and competing for a share of the total catch in a competitive fishery.

Can More Be Less? An Experimental Test of the Resource Curse

“…However, in its original form, the large number of players and the environment's complexity render it ill-suited for a laboratory experiment. We modify the model, drawing heavily upon Morgan and Sefton (2000) and the rent-dissipation literature (Tullock 1980, Walker et al 1990, Baye et al 1994, Nti 1997, Potters et al 1998, Knapp and Murphy 2010. More generally, we are only testing one of several distinct causal mechanisms proposed by resource curse scholars.…”

Special Issue on Experimental Methods in Environmental, Natural Resource, and Agricultural Economics

“…The authors argue that relaxing restrictions on the maximum bids from landowners could yield better results, especially when the Foreword v quality of the land enrolled in the program matters. Knapp and Murphy's (2010) study of rent dissipation in competitive fisheries is motivated by the challenges faced in the Bristol Bay Alaska salmon fishery. They use a novel, interactive experiment that "brings the field into the lab."…”

“…This special issue of ARER features primarily the papers presented at a methods workshop that sought to introduce young scholars to experimental economics techniques and to showcase examples of high quality re- The papers in this special issue not only contribute to the classic experimental economics literature, but also illustrate how far the field has grown since the early 1990s. The papers cover a wide range of topics, from emissions auctions under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (Shobe et al 2010) to managing a multispecies fishery (Anderson 2010), and use a variety of methods, including traditional laboratory experiments, field experiments, and hybrid approaches, such as Knapp and Murphy's (2010) field-in-thelab approach. What is common in these studies is the use of what Shogren, Parkhurst, and Hudson (2010) refer to as an experimental "mindset" which seeks to better understand the behavior of individuals, businesses, and organizations within the context of various institutional settings.…”

An experimental analysis of assignment problems and economic rent dissipation in quota managed fisheries

“…Economic experiments provide a means of examining human behaviour, alternate policy directives and/or institutional settings under controlled conditions by comparing direct observations with predicted outcomes (Knapp and Murphy, 2010;Reeson et al, changing population dynamics of the resource, making it difficult for them to determine whether declines in yield are due to overappropriation or environmental factors . Furthermore, it is challenging to determine the exact size of the stock, the amount that should be harvested and what effect an individual's catch has on others (Walters and Pearse, 1996).…”