Modeling regulated open access resource use

This thesis develops a new model of regulated open access resource exploitation. The basic H. S. Gordon model of open access rent dissipation is extended in two ways, by adding a model of regulatory behavior and by adding a market sector. The regulatory model assumes that regulators are goal oriented, choosing target harvest levels according to a safe stock concept. These harvest quotas are implemented by setting season lengths, conditioned on the industry fishing capacity. The industry, in turn, enters according to rents, conditioned on season length regulations. Harvest levels, fishing capacity, season length, and biomass are determined jointly and dynamically. Joint dynamics depend upon speeds of adjustment and parameters of the system and may be complex, including asymptotic and oscillatory patterns. The market sector model endogenizes exvessel prices, by modeling wholesale inventory dissipation behavior with an adjustment cost framework. A dynamic model of optimal inventory dissipation within each marketing period is coupled with a dynamic model of optimal carryover between marketing periods. This forms the basis for characterizing exvessel prices, which emerge as a derived demand for additions to inventory based on the optimal dissipation model. Exvessel prices are linked to the industry/regulator and wholesale market sectors via total harvest and season length regulations, which determine the marketing period length and optimal dissipation/carryover plans. The parameters of both the industry/regulator and the market model are estimated for the North Pacific Halibut fishery. Simulations compare predictions from the basic Gordon model with those from the new model. Predictions from the modified model are significantly different from the Gordon model. In particular, the role of the regulatory sector is critical, producing higher biomass and harvest levels, which in turn induce even larger capacity levels than under pure open access. These larger capacity levels must be stiffed, resulting in very short seasons such as those currently in the halibut fishery. The introduction of the marketing sector clarifies complicated interrelationships between rents, regulations, and revenues. Recent changes associated with new fisheries programs that have been largely unanticipated by economists using the old Gordon paradigm are better explained by the new model.