Measuring boat-level efficiency in Commonwealth fisheries: An example using the Commonwealth Trawl Sector of the Southern and Eastern Scalefish and Shark Fishery

Paper presented at the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society (AARES) 2016 Conference. \r\n\r\n Australian Commonwealth fisheries are managed with the objective of maximising economic returns to the Australian community - an objective that may be served by increasing the efficiency of the fishing fleet. This paper presents a stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) of the Commonwealth Trawl Sector (CTS) of the Southern and Eastern Scalefish and Shark Fishery. ABARES used boat-level data to explore the potential of the SFA approach to determine the efficiency of the fleet and find reasons for any inefficiencies. \r\n\r\n This preliminary work: • indicates significant inefficiency in the CTS fleet \r\n• provides some support for the hypothesis that a structural adjustment in 2006 resulted in less efficient boats leaving the fishery, which led to improved economic returns \r\n• shows that interannual effects, such as stock availability, management changes and technical change, play a large role in the estimated frontier and must be disentangled from each other in further work to provide more information for managers.\r\n

本文发表于2016年澳大利亚农业与资源经济学会（Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, AARES）年会。

澳大利亚联邦渔业的管理目标为最大化澳大利亚社区的经济收益，而提升捕捞船队的作业效率是达成该目标的有效路径之一。本文针对东南多鳞鱼与鲨鱼渔业的联邦拖网作业区（Commonwealth Trawl Sector, CTS）开展了随机前沿分析（stochastic frontier analysis, SFA）。澳大利亚农业与资源经济科学局（Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, ABARES）采用渔船层面的微观数据，探究了随机前沿分析方法在评估船队作业效率及识别低效成因方面的应用潜力。

本项初步研究得到以下结论：
• 证实联邦拖网作业区船队存在显著的低效问题
• 为2006年产业结构调整促使低效渔船退出渔业、进而提升整体经济收益这一假说提供了一定支撑
• 表明种群可获得性、管理政策调整与技术变革等年度间效应，对估算得到的生产前沿边界影响显著，后续研究中需对各类效应加以区分剥离，方能为渔业管理者提供更具参考价值的信息。