IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rff/dpaper/dp-08-05-efd.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Lake Victoria Fish Stocks and the Effects of Water Hyacinths on the Catchability of Fish

Author

Listed:
  • Kateregga, Eseza
  • Sterner, Thomas

Abstract

This paper analyses the effects of the invasion of water hyacinths on fishing in Lake Victoria. We built two fairly standard Schaefer-type models that have one innovation: they allow the water hyacinth abundance to affect catchability. We estimated static and dynamic CPUE (catch per unit of effort) functions for Lake Victoria fisheries. We investigated the trend in the lake’s stocks during the period 1983–2000 and focused particularly on the effect of the water hyacinth on fish stocks and on catchability coefficients. The results shows that while fish stocks have fallen since 1990, this decline appears to have been at least temporarily halted by the declining catchability of fish due to the growing abundance of water hyacinths. The impact of the hyacinth on the catchability of fish was greatest in the Kenyan section of Lake Victoria. Although the hyacinths had many negative effects, one important effect has been to effectively hinder fishing and, thereby—paradoxically—stop or at least postpone serious overfishing.

Suggested Citation

  • Kateregga, Eseza & Sterner, Thomas, 2008. "Lake Victoria Fish Stocks and the Effects of Water Hyacinths on the Catchability of Fish," RFF Working Paper Series dp-08-05-efd, Resources for the Future.
    • Handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-08-05-efd
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.rff.org/RFF/documents/EfD-DP-08-05.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bell, Frederick W, 1972. "Technological Externalities and Common-Property Resources: An Empirical Study of the U. S. Northern Lobster Fishery," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 80(1), pages 148-158, Jan.-Feb..
    2. Flaaten, Ola, 1991. "Bioeconomics of sustainable harvest of competing species," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 163-180, March.
    3. Barry Smith, J., 1980. "Replenishable resource management under uncertainty: A reexamination of the U.S. Northern Fishery," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 209-219, September.
    4. Perron, Pierre, 1989. "The Great Crash, the Oil Price Shock, and the Unit Root Hypothesis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(6), pages 1361-1401, November.
    5. Smith, Vernon L, 1969. "On Models of Commercial Fishing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 77(2), pages 181-198, March/Apr.
    6. Townsend, Ralph E., 1986. "A critique of models of the American lobster fishery," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 277-291, September.
    7. Hall, Darwin C., 1977. "A note on natural production functions," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 258-264, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Frank Jensen & Lars Gårn Hansen, 2017. "The welfare gain from switching to tax regulation of fisheries," IFRO Working Paper 2017/07, University of Copenhagen, Department of Food and Resource Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ben White, 2000. "A Review of the Economics of Biological Natural Resources," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(3), pages 419-462, September.
    2. Duncan Knowler, 2002. "A Review of Selected Bioeconomic Models with Environmental Influences in Fisheries," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 163-181, May.
    3. Elinor Ostrom, 1989. "Microconstitutional Change in Multiconstitutional Political Systems," Rationality and Society, , vol. 1(1), pages 11-50, July.
    4. Sarker, Debnarayan & Ganguly, Dipanwita, 2006. "Socio-economic issues of prawn-seed collection in an open riverene fishery: a case study of prawn-seed collectors in West Bengal," MPRA Paper 33502, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Eggert, Håkan, 2006. "Fisheries Economics and 20 years with Marine Resource Economics: A Citation Analysis," Working Papers in Economics 203, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    6. Nicolas Querou & Agnès Tomini, 2014. "Ecosystem considerations in a second-best world," Post-Print hal-01123390, HAL.
    7. Matteo Mogliani, 2010. "Residual-based tests for cointegration and multiple deterministic structural breaks: A Monte Carlo study," Working Papers halshs-00564897, HAL.
    8. Bloch, Harry & Rafiq, Shuddhasattwa & Salim, Ruhul, 2015. "Economic growth with coal, oil and renewable energy consumption in China: Prospects for fuel substitution," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 104-115.
    9. Shahbaz, Muhammad & Hoang, Thi Hong Van & Mahalik, Mantu Kumar & Roubaud, David, 2017. "Energy consumption, financial development and economic growth in India: New evidence from a nonlinear and asymmetric analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 199-212.
    10. Joshy Easaw & Roberto Golinelli, 2022. "Professionals Inflation Forecasts: The Two Dimensions Of Forecaster Inattentiveness [“Sectoral and aggregate inflation dynamics in the euro area”]," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 74(3), pages 701-720.
    11. Mohsen Bahmani-Oskooee & Tsangyao Chang & Kuei-Chiu Lee, 2016. "Panel asymmetric nonlinear unit root test and PPP in Africa," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(8), pages 554-558, May.
    12. Nasreen, Samia & Anwar, Sofia & Ozturk, Ilhan, 2017. "Financial stability, energy consumption and environmental quality: Evidence from South Asian economies," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 1105-1122.
    13. Perron, Pierre & Wada, Tatsuma, 2016. "Measuring business cycles with structural breaks and outliers: Applications to international data," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 281-303.
    14. Saroja Selvanathan & E.A. Selvanathan & Brinda Viswanathan, 2009. "Causality between Foreign Direct Investment and Tourism : Empirical Evidence from India," Finance Working Papers 22944, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    15. Wesam Salah Alaloul & Muhammad Ali Musarat & Muhammad Babar Ali Rabbani & Qaiser Iqbal & Ahsen Maqsoom & Waqas Farooq, 2021. "Construction Sector Contribution to Economic Stability: Malaysian GDP Distribution," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-26, April.
    16. Shyh-Wei Chen, 2008. "Non-stationarity and Non-linearity in Stock Prices: Evidence from the OECD Countries," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 3(11), pages 1-11.
    17. José A. Núñez & Carlos M. Urzúa, 1996. "The Mexican intertemporal budget constraint: Persistent signals of an eventual collapse," Estudios Económicos, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos, vol. 11(2), pages 167-180.
    18. Maximiliano Marzetti & Rok Spruk, 2023. "Long-Term Economic Effects of Populist Legal Reforms: Evidence from Argentina," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 65(1), pages 60-95, March.
    19. Galiani, Sebastian & Lamarche, Carlos & Porto, Alberto & Sosa-Escudero, Walter, 2005. "Persistence and regional disparities in unemployment (Argentina 1980-1997)," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 375-394, July.
    20. Bae, Jinho & Nelson, Charles R., 2007. "Earnings growth and the bull market of the 1990s: Is there a case for rational exuberance?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 690-707, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Water hyacinth; catchability coefficients; Lake Victoria fish stocks;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q22 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Fishery
    • Q57 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Ecological Economics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-08-05-efd. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Resources for the Future (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rffffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.