Offsetting Externalities in Estimating MEY in Multispecies Fisheries
The Australian federal fisheries policy identifies maximising net economic returns as the primary objective of fisheries management. This has largely been interpreted as maximising the net economic yield (MEY) in fisheries. More recently, the influence of reducing yields to achieve MEY on prices and...
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| Published in: | Ecological economics 2018-04, Vol.146, p.304-311 |
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| Main Authors: | , , |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | eng |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | The Australian federal fisheries policy identifies maximising net economic returns as the primary objective of fisheries management. This has largely been interpreted as maximising the net economic yield (MEY) in fisheries. More recently, the influence of reducing yields to achieve MEY on prices and the transfer of consumer surplus to producers has been raised as a potential issue. Achieving fishery MEY may result in a reduction in net economic returns in a broader sense if the loss to consumers exceeds the gain to the industry. The transfer of consumer surplus to producers is also potentially undesirable, and may result in a dead weight loss. Similarly, the disutility associated with bycatch in fisheries may also affect our interpretation of “optimal” yields if non-monetary values are considered. These externalities are generally not considered in determining MEY. In this paper, we develop a generic multispecies bioeconomic model that is used to estimate the impact of broadening the consideration of net economic returns to include changes in consumer surplus as well as the inclusion of non-market values associated with bycatch. We find that traditional measures of MEY may not achieve maximum returns to society overall if these externalities exist.
•Traditional measures of maximum economic yield ignore consumer and environmental externalities.•A multispecies fisheries model was developed to consider these on the definition of MEY.•Ignoring consumers resulted in lower effort and catch, and a transfer of consumer surplus to fishers.•Ignoring environmental externalities results in an overestimate of optimal fishing effort.•Traditional estimates of MEY do not maximise benefits to society when these externalities exist. |
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| ISSN: | 0921-8009 1873-6106 |