Table 4. — Salmon fishing effort, quantity of landings (pounds and values) and average values per fishermen in Alaska, 



Washington, and Oregon, 1947-1966. 



' Dellated by Consumer Price Index (1457-54 = 100). 

 - Data not available. 

 SOURCF: Derived from Fisherv Sratislics oj the I'nited States. L'.S. fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Commercial Fisheries. 



was his recognition of a particular form of 

 imperfect factor markets, and involved relaxing 

 the assumption that firms or industries can 

 at the same price, both buy and sell inputs. 

 A "fixed asset", by Johnson's definition, is not 

 fixed because it has a certain physical life ex- 

 pectancy, but because it is more economical 

 to keep it in production than to sell it. Two 

 factor prices are involved, i.e., an acquisition 

 price and a salvage value. Applied to the fish- 

 ing industry, the acquisition price is what a 

 fisherman (or the industry) has paid or must 

 pay for an additional productive asset, e.g., a 

 vessel; the salvage value is what the fisherman 

 (or industry) could derive from the asset if 

 it were sold rather than used. For individual 

 fishermen, the difference between the two 

 prices might be small if the quality of assets 

 is assumed constant. For the salmon industry 

 or even a particular segment of the industry, 

 the margin might be substantial. The more 

 specialized the gear or vessel, the less one 

 might expect to derive from selling it to an- 

 other segment of the industry. 



If there is a large difference between ac- 

 quisition price and salvage value, then, it 

 would be possible for no change to occur in 

 the aggregate level of a resource even if there 

 were significant changes in factor productivity 

 or product price. Figure 3 illustrates the 

 variety of adjustments that could conceivably 

 take place, depending upon (a) the starting 

 point, (b) the magnitude of the shift in the 

 MVP function, and (c) the divergence between 

 acquisition price and salvage value. In the 

 absence of specific knowledge about these 

 factors, the notion of symmetry between exit 

 and entry in the salmon fishery becomes an 

 empirical question. Fixed asset theory, how- 

 ever, does provide a conceptual framework for 

 specifying a statistical model and interpreting 

 the results. 



Empirical Analysis 



In that we had access only to secondary 

 data (U.S. Department of the Interior, 1947- 

 67), most of the variables in the analysis were 



141 



