Current rationalization options for West Coast groundfish trawl fisheries include significant allocations of harvester quota to processors, justified as compensation for “stranded capital.†This article discusses the origin of the concept of stranded capital, its use in other policy settings, preconditions, measurement, and remedies for addressing it. Our main finding is that rationalization of fisheries is unlikely to generate significant processing stranded capital. Most capital involved in fisheries processing is malleable and not likely to be devalued as a result of rationalization. If policy makers nevertheless judge it desirable to consider compensation, a legitimate process would tie compensation to anticipated or demonstrated capital losses. Current policies proposed on the U.S. West Coast to transfer harvester quota are arbitrary and unsupported by empirical estimates of the magnitude of the problem. They are likely to generate important spillover effects that could negate some of the intended benefits of rationalization.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Did you know? You can create a compilation of all publications of a group of people, say alumni of a program, your students or memers of an association.