Regulating Biological Resources: Lessons From Marine Fisheries in the United States

In 1996, with United States fish populations in decline, Congress overhauled fishing laws with scientific thresholds for rebuilding overfished stocks. The law's impact is contested, and lawmakers have spent over a decade debating its reauthorization while countries around the world consider similar policies. We develop the first causally interpretable evaluation of this law, exploiting the fact that the European Union has comparable fisheries but only recently developed similar laws. Compiling comprehensive data on US and EU fishery status and management, we examine fish populations that decline to unhealthy levels and measure the effect of a policy that aims to rebuild them to health. We find treated populations increase by 52 percent relative to these counterfactuals, with both catch and revenue rebounding to baseline levels or greater. Analyzing fisheries' revenue, we find net present values are higher for at least 69 percent of rebuilt stocks compared to simulated counterfactuals.