Assessing technical efficiency in commercial fisheries: the mid-Atlantic sea scallop fishery

Despite the extensive ffort to research issues of allocative efficiency in fisheries, little empirical analysis of technical efficiency (TE) in fisheries exists. This tudy examines vessel efficiency using a stochastic production frontier based on a sample of sea scallop vessels operating in the Mid-Atlantic between 1987 and 1990. Estimates of TE are computed and compared with input usage, resource conditions, economic performance, and recently imposed regulations. The analysis suggests that owners and captains only partially compensate for changes in resource conditions through the use of labor and fishing effort, and recent regulations may improve overall TE in the short run. Key words: commercial fisheries, stochastic frontier, technical efficiency. In recent years, there has been an increase in research concerned with assessing the relative technical efficiency (TE) of firms, or the ability of firms to produce maximum output with a given set of inputs and technology (Greene 1980; Jondrow et al.; Kumbhaker). Little of this research, however, has been directed to examin-ing TE in renewable resource-based industries. The distinguishing feature of most renewable resource industries is their reliance on the availability of natural stocks. Fisheries, for ex-ample, include a process known as recruitment (where new individuals--recruits--enter he exploitable population). Recruitment and sub-sequent harvestable stocks may be very sensi-tive to environmental factors, such as tempera-ture, currents, and rainfall. Recruitment can vary thirtyfold, driving harvest from abysmal to lucrative levels. Variations in recruitment, com