Economic, Political, and Social Barriers to 

 Efficiency in Selected Pacific Coast Fisheries 



James A. Crutchfield' 

 ABSTRACT 



Multidisciplinary models are beinK developed for the salmon, halibut, king crab and 

 anchovy fisheries as an aid in fisheries management. These models will provide estimates 

 of economic rent in these fisheries, with an evaluation of alternative management 

 structures available to capture these net benefits. The character of the models for each 

 of these differing fisheries is described, including reference to the nature of the products, 

 markets, processors, harvesters, regulators, stocks, and locations sectors of these fisheries. 

 Introductory observations are made on the future role of multifishery modeling studies. 



INTRODUCTION 



In June 1970 the University of Washington 

 and the University of Rhode Island were funded 

 by the National Marine Fisheries Service to take 

 a first step in identification and quantification 

 of the economic costs of institutional barriers 

 to the efficient use of commercially fished marine 

 stocks. Anyone familiar with the American flag 

 fisheries will recognize that the time and financial 

 limitations of these one or two year studies 

 preclude any definitive findings applicable on a 

 broad scale. Nevertheless, first steps must some- 

 how be taken, and the two university teams, 

 together with their NMFS counterparts, share 

 the view that a convincing demonstration of 

 substantial economic gains from the elimination 

 of obvious sources of inefficiency is one of the 

 most important of these steps. Hopefully, it will 

 represent one phase of a broad-based attack on 

 the problems of modernizing the American 

 fisheries and rationalizing the objectives and 

 techniques of management. 



This paper presents a summary progress 

 report of the Pacific Coast studies. The project 

 has two objectives. In the short run it is intended 

 to provide reasonable estimates of potential net 

 economic rent in representative Pacific Coast 

 fisheries, and to explore the feasibility of alter- 

 native management regimes to realize at least 

 a portion of these net benefits. The importance 



University of Washington. 



of this objective is underscored by increasing 

 pressure for tangible evidence that the overall 

 activities of the National Marine Fisheries 

 Service can be translated into economic benefits: 

 an outcome that is anything but likely under 

 present institutional arrangements in the fish- 

 eries. In the face of increasingly insistent de- 

 mands on the inshore waters of the United 

 States, and the likelihood of severe budget 

 stringency for an indefinite period, a convincing 

 demonstration of the net benefits that can be 

 generated by the elimination of unnecessary 

 barriers to efficient harvesting of marine stocks 

 may well determine the future existence of a 

 strong federal fisheries function. 



The longer term objective of the study is to 

 develop primary data and modeling capacity to 

 test fully alternative management and develop- 

 ment regimes. Previous studies of individual 

 segments of the American fisheries (Crutchfield 

 and Zellner, 1962; Crutchfield and Pontecorvo, 

 1969; and Bell and Carlson, 1970) have been 

 concerned primarily with maximum potential 

 net economic rent in long run terms, with 

 varying assumptions as to acceptance or modifi- 

 cation of existing legal and other constraints. 

 It is clear, however, that a full reevaluation of 

 fishery management objectives requires a much 

 broader frame of reference and a larger kit of 

 tools. Since it is politically unlikely that all 

 barriers to efficiency will be removed simul- 

 taneously, it would be most useful to develop a 

 modeling technique that would permit us to 

 look at a wide variety of measures or combina- 

 tions of measures, at relatively low cost but with 



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