Browsing by Author "Yandle, Tracy"

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Marching Towards Leviathan, Embracing the Market, or Romancing the Commons: An Examination of Three Approaches to Fisheries Management
(1998) Imperial, Mark T.; Yandle, Tracy
"The paper argues that three competing paradigms or approaches to fisheries management exist: (1) the traditional centralized bureaucratic model favoring government regulation; (2) a market-based model favoring individual transferable quotas (ITQs); and, (3) a community-based model advocating the self-regulation of fish stocks. Examining each institutional arrangement reveals the normative biases and preferences that lead to different policy objectives. It also demonstrates that the policy analysts subscribing to each approach tend to rely on a different set of policy instruments and institutional arrangements. After examining each paradigmatic approach to fisheries management, the paper then critiques the institutional analysis performed by policy analysts in the fisheries literature. The major critiques are that the literature often ignores the full range of transaction costs associated with developing and implementing fisheries policies. The paper then compares each approach in greater detail by examining the transaction costs associated with each institutional arrangement. The paper concludes with an examination of how each institutional arrangement satisfies some general criteria for assessing institutional performance. The central argument is that fisheries analysts need an improved understanding of the strengths and limitations of the three prevailing approaches to fisheries management. Moreover, a greater cross-fertilization of ideas and approaches is needed to bridge the gap between the three disjointed areas the fisheries literature."
Market-based Natural Resource Management: An Institutional Analysis of Individual Tradable Quotas in New Zealand's Commercial Fisheries
(2001) Yandle, Tracy
"This dissertation examines the institutional choices made in how the New Zealand government manages its fishery resources and the consequences of these choices in New Zealand's fisheries. Special attention is paid to how the changing perceptions of property rights led to changes in institutional arrangements. Specifically, the adoption of a market-based ITQ-based management regime in the late 1980s; and the later development of a co-management regime based on stakeholder groups are examined. I explore four broad questions: (1) How and why was New Zealand's Quota Management System (QMS) adopted? (2) What effect did the Quota Management System have on the structure and characteristics of the fishing industry in New Zealand? (3) What types of property rights do Individual Tradable Quotas (ITQs) represent? Has this changed over time, and what are the effects of such changes? (4) What are the characteristics and origins of New Zealand's co-management approach? How likely is this approach to succeed? These questions are examined using data from a combination of sources including: a panel survey of ITQ owners in the Auckland Region dating to the start of QMS, national surveys of large companies and stakeholder groups, quota ownership records, expert interviews, and extensive archival and published documents. "The data and information presented in this dissertation will show that ITQs are a powerful management tool, the use of which has wide-ranging institutional implications. As the Property rights change, it fundamentally changes the nature of the fishery--changing how people view the resource and how they interact with it. These changes go beyond those envisioned in the economic modeling of quota systems to change the social and institutional fabric of the fishery, and the resource management responsibilities that the fishing industry and community are willing to take on. The findings also have implications for our theoretical conception of approaches to natural resource management, showing that the simple vision of three competing approaches may be incomplete, and that a layering of approaches into various forms of co-management possible and in many cases desirable."
The Possibility of Evolution from Market-Based Regulation to Common Pool Regulation of a Natural Resource: A Case Study of New Zealand's Commercial Fisheries
(1996) Yandle, Tracy
"As the world's population grows, fisheries--particularly off-shore fisheries--are an increasingly important food source. Yet there is also evidence that these fisheries are being exploited to the point of over-fishing and ecosystem degradation. Over the past 40 years, the global fish catch quadrupled, but the catch is now no longer rising. Since the creation of 200 mile national economic exclusion zones, many nations have searched for ways to regulate fishing within these zones. This job of regulating has been complicated by factors such as imperfect information, high enforcement costs, and the difficulty of regulating a resource that is itself constantly moving and possibly migratory."
Privatizing the Commons...Twelve Years Later: A Study of New Zealand's Market-Based Fisheries Management
(2000) Yandle, Tracy; Dewees, Christopher M.
"Fisheries management issues are receiving considerable attention. Over the last few decades the situation has become acute. For example, 'of the worlds 15 major marine fishing regions, the catch in all but two has fallen; in four the catch has shrunk by more than 30%' (Weber 1994). Similarly, 'eighteen fisheries have seen their productivity fall by more than 100,000 tons each. Together, these drops represent a fall of nearly 30 million tons or more than one-third of the 1992 catch' (Weber 1994). As these fisheries decline, harvesters have begun placing increased effort on other fisheries resources. Fisheries management research has accelerated, as the scope of management problems becomes apparent. As a result, a large body of literature in economics, anthropology, political science, and other social sciences addresses problems and innovations in fisheries management. "Presently, fisheries policy analysis can be divided into three broad categories: conservation, market-based, and community-based (Charles 1992). Each approach comes with a distinct perspective. Today, the market-based approach is probably the dominant approach recommended in the fisheries policy literature. Proponents of market- based regulation argue that the approach improves economic efficiency and productivity, while protecting fisheries at a sustainable level. It may also increase fisher incomes, modernize the industry, reduce overcapitalization, and help eliminate the 'race for fish' (See Maloney and Pearse 1989, Terrebonne 1995, Arnason 1991, Grafton 1995, Charles 1992, Beckerman 1990, Clark 1994, Grafton 1996, Buck 1995). However, critics suggest that negative outcomes including: industry consolidation, loss of small scale fishers, unemployment, loss of community and damage to local institutions, equity problems, cheating (such as high grading or bycatch dumping) and inadequate scientific knowledge to accurately set quota limits (E.g., Barber 1989, Young & McCay 1995, Palsson & Helgason 1996, Schlager 1990, Copes 1996, Haliday et all 1992, Mace 1993). "As the earliest (1986) nation to introduce a market-based quota management system (QMS) for most of its marine fisheries, New Zealand presents a unique opportunity to study the influence that this regulatory approach has on the fishing industry and community. The length of time New Zealand's QMS has been in place means that it is possible to conduct a long-term analysis of both the strengths and weaknesses of this regulatory approach. Using a variety of sources, this study examines changes that occurred in the Auckland regions fishing community. This study primarily relies upon data from a panel survey (dating from the policy's inception in 1986-87, 1995, and 1999) of fishers, combined with analysis of national quota holding data, and documentary sources. The authors use these data sources to examine the claims made both for and against quota management. Their assessment proposes that market-based regulation is neither the panacea nor the curse that some characterizations suggest. Instead, it is a policy tool with an important mixture of strengths and weaknesses that create important and long-lasting changes on the fishing industry, fishing community, and regulatory community associated with it. Nations or fisheries considering quota-based management systems need to carefully set management goals and reflect on the set of changes and challenges they are likely to face if they adopt a market-based management approach."
Renegotiating Property Rights in the Florida Golden Crab Fishery
(2013) Crosson, Scott; Yandle, Tracy; Stoffle, Brent
"The golden crab (Chaceon fenneri) supports a small, economically healthy fishery in south Florida. Crabbers in the fishery have successfully protected themselves against larger outside fishing interests in the past, and management has been stable for over 15 years. Why, then, did a portion of the fleet propose shifting to individual transferable quotas (ITQs)? Our findings suggest that proponents sought ITQ management because they believed it would further limit the ability of other crabbers to enter the fishery and act as a mechanism to legally preserve the informal and formal property rights that they have previously negotiated among themselves. Opponents believed that a shift to an ITQ regime would destroy those same property rights. We explore the implications of these findings to a broader understanding of property rights and natural resource management institutions, noting that the currently existing system closely resembles a territorial use rights fishery (TURF)."
Understanding the Consequences of Property Rights Mismatches: A Case Study of New Zealands Marine Resources
(2007) Yandle, Tracy
"Within fisheries and natural resource management literature, there is considerable discussion about the key roles that property rights can play in building biologically and socially sustainable resource management regimes. A key point of agreement is that secure long-term property rights provide an incentive for resource users to manage the resource sustainably. However, property rights mismatches create ambiguity and conflict in resource use. Though the term mismatches is usually associated with problems in matching temporal and spatial resource characteristics with institutional characteristics, I expand it here to include problems that can arise when property rights are incompletely defined or incompletely distributed. Property rights mismatches are particularly likely to occur over marine resources, for which multiple types of resource and resource user can be engaged and managed under a variety of regulatory regimes. I used New Zealand's marine resources to examine the causes and consequences of these property rights mismatches. New Zealand is particularly interesting because its property-rights-based commercial fishing regime, in the form of individual transferable quotas, has attracted considerable positive attention. However, my review of the marine natural resource management regime from a broader property rights perspective highlights a series of problems caused by property rights mismatches, including competition for resources among commercial, customary, and recreational fishers; spatial conflict among many marine resource users; and conflicting incentives and objectives for the management of resources over time. The use of a property rights perspective also highlights some potential solutions such as the layering of institutional arrangements and the improvement of how property rights are defined to encourage long-term sustainability."
Understanding the Development of Co-Management in a Modern Fishery: Rock Lobster Management in New Zealand
(2004) Yandle, Tracy
"Key issues in self-governance are why co-management organizations develop, and how the characteristics of the organization influence their success. Traditionally, it is argued that co-management regimes grow from long-lived community based regimes. Closely linked are the concepts of social capital and civic engagement which Putnam (1993) identifies as key to the development of democratic self-governing societies. However, it is also argued that the co-management can develop out of strong property rights regimes that provide incentives to take on co-management or self-management responsibilities. By examining a recent case where co- management has developed from a regime that included elements of bureaucracy-based regulation and of market-based regulation (ITQs), it is possible to tease out which of these variables drives the development of co- management in a setting similar to those that many industrialized fisheries face."