Community Impacts of Fishery Privatization

The adoption of secure, transferable property rights to a natural resource have efficiency properties appealing to economists, but faces opposition justified by concerns over potential negative impacts on rural communities. Major concerns include the consolidation of vessel ownership, job losses, and changes in community participation, but empirical evidence is limited. This paper examines the impact of the creation of individual transferable quotas (ITQs) to fish for Alaskan halibut and sablefish on rural fishing ports. Using data from the state of Alaska on fish landings, production, and community characteristics, we establish that the expected consolidation occurs in aggregate, and then examine the differential impact on rural communities. Although vessel consolidation is less pronounced in rural communities than larger ports with airport access, we do find limited evidence of reduced taxable sales revenue in rural ports. We examine whether two policies aimed at protecting rural economies—quota transfer restrictions and community development quota—were partially responsible for the limited consolidation in rural ports.

将安全且可转让的产权应用于自然资源具备经济学家所青睐的效率特性，但却因潜在对农村社区的负面影响引发担忧，进而面临反对。主要担忧包括渔船所有权集中、就业岗位流失以及社区参与度变化，但实证证据较为有限。本文研究了针对阿拉斯加大比目鱼和黑貂鱼的个体可转让配额（ITQs）制度的建立对农村渔港的影响。利用阿拉斯加州关于鱼类上岸量、产量及社区特征的数据，我们证实总体上确实发生了预期的集中现象，随后分析了其对农村社区的差异化影响。尽管农村社区的渔船集中程度不如拥有机场的大型港口显著，但我们确实发现了农村港口应税销售收入下降的有限证据。我们探讨了两项旨在保护农村经济的政策——配额转让限制与社区发展配额——是否对农村港口有限的集中现象起到了部分作用。