Costa Rica’s environmental services payments program (Pagos por Servicios Ambientales, or PSA) started in 1997 and was the true pioneer in this area. It is broadly cited and has led to numerous calls for emulating its approach in various ways. It has itself evolved over time, with acknowledged...

This study examines the spatial nature of optimal bioinvasion control. We develop a spatially explicit two-dimensional model of species spread that allows for differential control across space and time, and we solve for optimal spatial-dynamic control strategies. We find that the optimal...

The illegal exploitation of wild abalone in South Africa has been escalating since 1994, despite increased enforcement, leading to collapse in some sections of its range. South Africa banned all wild abalone fishing in 2008 but controversially reopened it in 2010. This paper formulates a...

When every individual's effort imposes negative externalities, self-interested behavior leads to socially excessive effort. To curb these excesses when effort cannot be monitored, competing output-sharing partnerships can form. With the right-sized groups, aggregate effort falls to the socially...

Lake Victoria fisheries are important to Tanzanian food security, employment, and foreign exchange, but they are experiencing declining performance largely due to overfishing. This paper studies technical efficiency and skipper skill using Tanzanian fishery data for the two major species, Nile...

Using South Africa’s hake and rock lobster fisheries as examples, this paper argues the need for satellite accounts of South Africa’s commercial fisheries. It stresses the policy role of satellite accounts, particularly where access to fish stocks is contested. Satellite accounts give all...

This study deals with fisheries and trade, focusing on developing countries. Fish is globally traded, and for many developing countries, it is an important net export good. In most of these countries, fisheries are often characterized by poorly defined property rights, accompanied by...

This paper analyzes the causes for regulatory compliance using traditional deterrence variables and potential moral and social variables. We used self-reported data from Tanzanian artisanal fishers in Lake Victoria. The results indicated that the decision to be a non-violator or to be a...

This paper analyses the effects of the invasion of water hyacinths on fishing in Lake Victoria. We built two fairly standard Schaefer-type models that have one innovation: they allow the water hyacinth abundance to affect catchability. We estimated static and dynamic CPUE (catch per unit of...

The problem of the commons is more important to our lives and thus more central to economics than a century ago when Katharine Coman led off the first issue of the American Economic Review. As the U.S. and other economies have grown, the carrying-capacity of the planet — in regard to natural...