JUSTIFICACIÓN

The previous section established that managing a fishery at MSY as opposed to MEY, when regulation prevents vessels from operating at maximum capacity, leads to economy-wide gains. In this section, I evaluate the gains by calibrating the steady state of the model to match the 2015 Alaskan labor market.

A meaningful laboratory for studying preferred harvest patterns can be found in Alaska. Alaska’s fisheries are, for the most part, regulated by the The North Pacific Fishery Man- agement Council. The Council uses a patchwork of regulation to manage Alaska’s fish- eries. The clearest statement of their regulation involves the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Management Area, which specifies that the groundfish complex operates at 85 percent of the historical estimate of MSY.

I use this target-stock policy to compare steady states of the model economy. Specif- ically, I match the average vacancy–unemployment ratio that prevailed in Alaska over 2015 to determine 0.85 × MSY and calculate the gains from increasing TAC to MSY. For the calibration exercise, I posit that the Alaskan economy is capable of maintaining the stock of fish at MSY.

2.5.1

Parameters

The time period is one month. I set the required rate of return on assets to match a 5 percent annual rate. The parameter α represents the share of consumers’ expenditure on

fish.8_{I take α to be a fundamental parameter and use US consumers’ 2015 expenditures on}

fishery products at food service establishments plus retail sales for home consumption. This is divided by 2015 personal consumption expenditures on nondurable goods and services to calculate the share of income spent on fish. This parameter reflects the value of chain of fishing (but not perfectly).9

Turning to labor-market parameters, I usedShimer’s (2012) procedure to adjust transi- tion rates for temporal aggregation. I used aggregate US data for the calculation. I set the separation rate, λ, equal to the average UE transition rate in 2015. The flow benefit of un- employment comes fromHall(2005) and represents close to 40 percent of the equilibrium wage. The cost of purchasing a unit of capital to begin production, k, is set equal toHall’s flow cost of posting a vacancy multiplied by the expected duration of posting, 1/q θ?
. The bargaining parameter, β, is set to 0.5 so that fishers and vessel owners evenly split the gains from their productive match.

The calibration strategy is to match the average vacancy–unemployment ratio for Alaska. Data on Alaskan unemployment are available from the Local Area Unemployment Statistics program. Data on Alaskan vacancies are available from the Conference Board.

Recent vacancy data most often come from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, which are based on firms’ responses. But these data are not disaggregated to the state level. The Conference Board’s vacancy data, while available at the state level, are constructed from vacancies advertised online. Since I am unaware of any estimated matching technology based exclusively on vacancies advertised online, I use the Confer- ence Board’s data on vacancies to estimate a matching technology for the United States. I parameterize the matching technology as Cobb–Douglas, m = ωvξ_u1−ξ_{. Based on this es-}

timate, I take ξ = 0.858. I use ω in the matching function to match Alaska’s 2015 average unemployment rate, which was 7.95 percent. Finally, I set the maximum harvest capacity, h, to 1.1. The parameters are listed in table2.3.

2.5.2

Implications of Managing the Fishery at MSY as Opposed to

MEY

The implications of managing the fishery at MSY as opposed to MEY increase the TAC by almost 18 percent. Doing so lowers the unemployment rate from 7.95 percent to 7.59

8_{The model economy is isomorphic to one where consumers have Cobb–Douglas utility with the coef-}

ficient on fish equal to α.

9_{Personal consumption expenditures on nondurable goods and services is listed in table 1.1.5, lines 5}

percent. Figure2.6shows the increase in equilibrium labor-market tightness, θ?_.10

The equilibrium for the initial calibration of the model is depicted in figure 2.6 as the intersection of the two job-creation curves depicted with solid black lines. The job- creation curves are parameterizations of θχ(ϕ)and θφ(ϕ), implicitly given in equations

(2.12) and (2.13). As proved in proposition 2, the share of fishers in the economy is α. When TAC increases, both job-creation curves shift upwards. This shift is depicted in the figure with broken red lines. The increase in TAC shifts the vessel-level harvest profile rightward, as depicted in figure2.6. Catch increases. When catch increases, the relative price of the non-fishery good increases. Firms find it more profitable to recruit workers in the non-fishery sector. The economy expands as the economy moves along the Beveridge curve in figure2.3. The increase in aggregate demand includes increased demand for fish at the new equilibrium. The expansion is similar to the expansion associated with an increase in carrying capacity described in proposition3.

For the calibration, the increase in labor-market tightness depicted in figure 2.6ex- pands Alaskan employment by 1,300 jobs, or 0.4 percent, in both sectors of the economy. Unemployment is lower and equilibrium economy-wide surplus increases by 0.13 percent. Only 11 (1, 300 × ϕ?_{) of the jobs are created in Alaskan commercial fisheries. The re-}

mainder represent the part of the economy that gets fish from “sea to plate” (Christensen, 2010) and the associated macroeconomic linkages.

This general-equilibrium effect is unaccounted for by the sole owner but accounted for by the social planner. The tighter labor market in equilibrium means wages are higher. Higher wages increase demand for the homogeneous final good. Faced with increased demand, final-good producers pay more for inputs, both fish and non-fishery goods alike. Overall surplus increases.