Most fisheries worldwide remunerate their crew with a share system, where crew receive a part of the revenues or a part of the revenues less costs, rather than a fixed wage. Although labor is one of the main costs in fisheries and the share remuneration system has a strong influence on firm behavior and its economic performance, little attention has been paid it. In a share remuneration system, crew salaries can significantly increase when the economic performance of a vessel improves. This allows the crew to capture part of the fisheries rent. Bioeconomic analyses are performed for the Bay of Biscay nephrops fishery on main management targets. Results confirm the importance of considering a share system compared to a fixed remuneration system in vessel owner (capital) and crew (labor) rent distribution and fishing decisions.

JEL Codes: Q22, J33, M52.

This article studies ex-vessel demand of the blue crab market in the Chesapeake Bay. In addition to providing empirical results regarding the important local fishery, it offers a useful example of the potential for inverse demand systems for seafood where quantities are often defined prior to prices and a variety of products are obtained from a single species. This is done using a non-linear Inverse Almost Ideal Demand System coupled with seasonal patterns and controlling for endogeneity. The model used here is able to address seasonality in demand in terms of varying flexibilities over seasons and deals with endogeneity in accordance with biological stock assessment data. Empirical results show significant season-varying market behaviors and the presence of endogeneity in the demand system. All market categories are price inflexible across seasons. Cross-category flexibilities suggest that the categories are quantity substitutes in the market.

JEL Codes: Q21, Q22.

The price of fish depends on quality attributes such as size and freshness. In turn, quality attributes are related to fishery management. This article presents a hedonic analysis where attribute prices of size and quality ratings are estimated for the Swedish Baltic cod fishery. Using information from 5,307 landing days, hedonic inverse demand functions are estimated with a random coefficient (RC) model. Results show that there are price premiums for larger sizes of cod and for cod with the highest quality rating. Results also show that own-quantity and cross-quantity effects are small and negative for most attributes. Thus, there is an indication that the management of a fish stock that changes the quantity of attributes will also change the prices of attributes, although the price effect is small in the case of Swedish Baltic cod.

JEL Codes: D21, Q22.

The rapid increase in production and trade of farmed abalone products is a presumed threat to wild abalone producing industries due to downward pressure on price. This article explores the long-run relationship and price dynamics of Australian wild-harvested abalone and other abalone imported into the Japanese market within a cointegration framework. Market integration is identified among fresh abalone products from six countries, with fairly stable relative prices, suggesting that Japanese consumers have a low level of product differentiation on the basis of origin. Consumers in the Japanese market are likely to willingly substitute between wild and farmed import product, placing continued pressure on price for Australian wild-harvested abalone suppliers into this market. A challenge for producers of wild-harvested product is the development of marketing strategies to build product differentiation and greater demand for wild products.

JEL Codes: Q21, Q22, Q27, Q28.

The wreckfish individual transferable quota (ITQ) program started in 1992 and is the oldest finfish ITQ program in the United States. Initially, the program appeared to be a success, bringing order to the previous years' derbies. Ex-vessel prices rose, harvest stabilized, and there was an orderly shrinking of the fleet to an economically appropriate size. The subsequent history of the fishery is more complex. ITQ sales dwindled in 1995, then ceased for 13 years. Harvest plummeted to barely a tenth of the eligible quota, and in 2010 the fleet's quota was reduced 88%.

Was the wreckfish ITQ program a failure? We provide the first published analysis of the program in two decades. We examine the decisions of former participants to leave the fishery. We also examine the program's current economic, biological, and regulatory performance compared to the program's original stated goals and the goals associated with ITQs in the literature.

JEL Codes: D72, D73, D78, N52, Q22, Q28, Q58.

Surveys of fishery participants are often voluntary and, as a result, commonly have missing data associated with them. The two primary causes of missing data that generate concern are unit non-response and item non-response. Unit non-response occurs when a potential respondent does not complete and return a survey, resulting in a missing respondent. Item non-response occurs in returned surveys when an individual question is unanswered. Both may lead to issues with extrapolating results to the population. We explain how to adjust data to estimate population parameters from surveys using two of the principal approaches available for addressing missing data, weighting and data imputation, and illustrate the effects they have on estimates of costs and earnings in the Alaska charter boat sector using data from a recent survey. The results suggest that ignoring missing data will lead to markedly different results than those estimated when controlling for the missing data.

JEL Codes: Q22, C8.