Productivity Change under an Individual Transferable Quota Management System

This is a scanned version of a published article. © The Author (2012). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.The original can be found at: http://www.aaea.org/publications/ajae. To the best of our knowledge, one or more authors of this paper were federal employees when contributing to this work.This study examines productivity change in the Mid-Atlantic surfclam and ocean quahog fishery, which\ud has been managed since 1990 using Individual Transferable Ouotas (ITQ). Productivity change is estimated\ud through a Malmquist index from 1981-2008, capturing change before and after implementation\ud of the quota system. We then decompose the index to examine changes in technical efficiency, scale\ud efficiency, and technical change. Our findings indicate that the ITQ system has not sustained gains\ud in vessel productivity. These results are thought to be driven by spatial changes in biomass and the\ud inability to access more productive fishing grounds