From Open-Access to Individual Quotas: Disentangling the Effects of Policy Reform and Environmental Changes in the Norwegian Coastal Cod Fishery

• Main Authors: Diekert , Florian, Lund , Kristen, Schweder, Tore
• Format: Report
• Language: unknown
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic cod
• Online Access: http://www.sv.uio.no/econ/english/research/unpublished-works/working-papers/pdf-files/2014/memo-07-2014.pdf

Understanding the e ect of introducing property rights to natural resources is central in economics, but empirical analysis is frustrated by the complexity of socioecological systems. We construct a detailed bio-economic model of the Norwegian coastal cod shery, which was closed after 1989, to isolate the e ect of environmental variability. We project stock and harvest forward in the counterfactual scenario of no intervention, showing that the policy had only a small positive impact on Stock biomass, but a pronounced positive e ect on pro ts. The main driver, uncovered by index-number decomposition, is savings in fuel and labor costs. Open access; Property rights; Quasi-experiment; Counterfactual control; Bio-economic modeling; Productivity; North-East Arctic cod;