Marine Resource Economics (MRE) is pleased to present the 2024 Outstanding Article Award to Y. Allen Chen and Alan C. Haynie for their article “Size-Targeting in the Bering Sea Pollock Catcher/Processor Fishery with Heterogeneous Incentives.”
Researchers Chen and Haynie (2024) conduct a novel analysis of the heterogeneous incentives to target different sizes of pollock in the U.S. Bering Sea fishery. By coupling empirical models of fishing revenue with a clustering approach, they group vessels by how strongly their revenues depend on fish size and, therefore, their incentives for size targeting. They then embed these differences into an age-structured bioeconomic model of the fishery to examine how targeting smaller versus larger pollock affects catch, biomass, and revenues. Their results show that size-based management could generate gains in both harvest outcomes and stock biomass, especially in years when pollock abundance is low. This paper contributes to the fisheries economics literature showing the diversity of ways in which resource value can be degraded in a common pool fishery.
"This study highlights that not all fishing vessels respond to fish size in the same way," said Sunny Jardine, Editor-in-Chief of Marine Resource Economics. "Chen and Haynie account for this heterogeneity by grouping vessels based on their revenue responsiveness to fish size, which allows for a clearer understanding of the impacts of size-based harvesting. Their results show that size-based management can be particularly valuable in years of low pollock abundance, which can help to reduce variability in harvest and stabilize fishing revenue over time, and their approach provides a framework that could be applied to study heterogeneity in other fisheries or resource settings."
This annual award recognizes outstanding works published in Marine Resource Economics, with selections made by the associate editors, who consider articles published during the award year.
Visit the journal’s Outstanding Article Award webpage for more information about the award and to see the list of previous recipients.
Marine Resource Economics (MRE) publishes creative and scholarly economic analyses of a range of issues related to natural resource use in the global marine environment. The scope of the journal includes conceptual and empirical investigations aimed at addressing real-world ocean and coastal policy problems. MRE is an outlet for early results and imaginative new thinking on emerging topics in the marine environment, as well as rigorous theoretical and empirical analyses of questions that have long interested economists who study the oceans. A pluralistic forum for researchers and policy makers, MRE encourages challenges to conventional paradigms and perspectives. The journal is comprised of five sections: Articles, Perspectives, Case Studies, Systematic Reviews, and Book Reviews.
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Marine Resource Economics