Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA): A Framework for Assessing Capacity in Fisheries When Data are Limited

Abstract

The Sustainable Fisheries Act (SFA) and Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries Management require restoration of fishery resources and a matching of capacity to desired resource levels. There is, thus, a need to reduce harvesting capacity throughout many of the fisheries of the world. Yet, even the term capacity is not well defined, and it is even more complicated to measure. In this paper, we introduce several definitions and measures of capacity that are consistent with economic theory and empirical analyses. Since economic data on production activities are usually unavailable, we introduce the concept of data envelopment analysis (DEA) which may be used to calculate a physical or primal-based concept of capacity in fisheries. We initially introduce DEA and dispel many of the myths believed to be problems of DEA. We discuss how DEA may be used to calculate capacity in single and multiple-species fisheries. We also introduce how the DEA-derived measure of capacity may be formulated to include undesirable outputs (e.g., bycatch).

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