Competition from fish farming in influencing rent dissipation: the crawfish fishery

As fish farming has emerged to compete with a preexisting common property fishery sector, rent dissipation and consequently welfare losses may be reduced. Fish farming increases the increment to supply resulting in lower prices, which reduces the quantity supplied by the commons. Welfare gains accrue only when marginal cost is rising faster than average cost, which is the usual case in the wild fisheries. Using data from the Louisiana pond and wild crawfishing industries, it was shown that for the year 1978. fish farming of crawfish reduced potential welfare losses by 76 percent. Key words: commons, competition, crawfish, fish farming, rent dissipation, welfare. Fish farming, or aquaculture, is a case where a private sector has emerged to compete with the preexisting common property sector. Rent dissipation in common property sectors such as the fisheries has been analyzed by Worces-ter, and Bell (1972). However, rent dissipation from excessive fishing effort is lower when the private property sector is operating. This takes place because the fish farming increment to supply results in a lower price, which re-duces quantity supplied from the commons. What happens to the magnitude of rents dis-sipated when price falls because of fish farm-ing? In Louisiana, pond-reared crawfishing on private property has emerged in recent years to compete with the preexisting common property wild crawfish. In this article, the competition of fish farming in influencing rent dissipation will be analyzed for the special case of crawfish; however, the subject matter has wide applicability to the economic impact of many kinds of fish farming (e.g., shrimp, catfish). Also, the beneficence of private prop-erty hinges on the slope of the cost curves which will be discussed below. Frederick W. Bell is a professor of economics at Florida Stat