Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/64812 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
Economics Working Paper No. 2012-09
Publisher: 
Kiel University, Department of Economics, Kiel
Abstract: 
We analyze the effect of environmental uncertainties on optimal fishery management in a bio-economic fishery model. Unlike most of the literature on resource economics, but in line with ecological models, we allow the different biological processes of survival and recruitment to be affected differently by environmental uncertainties. We show that the overall effect of uncertainty on the optimal size of a fish stock is ambiguous, depending on the prudence of the value function. For the case of a risk-neutral fishery manager, the overall effect depends on the relative magnitude of two opposing effects, the 'convex-cost effect' and the 'gambling effect'. We apply the analysis to the Baltic cod and the North Sea herring fisheries, concluding that for risk neutral agents the net effect of environmental uncertainties on the optimal size of these fish stocks is negative, albeit small in absolute value. Under risk aversion, the effect on optimal stock size is positive for sufficiently high coefficients of constant relative risk aversion.
Subjects: 
fishery economics
environmental uncertainty
constant escapement
risk aversion
prudence
JEL: 
Q22
Q57
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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