Conference Agenda

Climate-driven non-stationarity challenges fisheries management approaches that rely on stable historical relationships between productivity and environmental conditions. Abrupt regime shifts can fundamentally alter stock–recruitment dynamics, which can alter the performance of fixed or slowly updated harvest rules. While economic escapement rules are often shown to outperform biological benchmarks under perfect information, their performance under realistic constraints on regime-shift detection and management response is not well understood. We evaluate the welfare performance of three widely used harvest control rules—maximum sustainable yield (MSY) escapement, deterministic economic escapement under stationary productivity, and stochastic economic escapement that anticipates regime shifts—when management responds to productivity changes with explicit delays. Using pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) in Prince William Sound, we parameterize distinct pre- and post-regime productivity functions associated with the 1988–1989 climate shift and exploit biologically independent odd- and even-year broodlines managed under identical institutional rules. Management delays reflect realistic constraints arising from monitoring costs, statistical detection lags, and regulatory inertia. We find three key results. First, when regime shifts are detected and incorporated promptly, economic escapement rules substantially increase expected net benefits—by 36–46% relative to MSY—by aligning harvest decisions with current productivity. Second, the insurance value of anticipatory economic management declines as detection and response delays increase, reducing expected welfare gains. Third, delayed management responses significantly increases the frequency of extreme low-welfare outcomes, raising the likelihood of fishery disaster declarations and public intervention. Under longer delays, MSY escapement exhibits greater robustness and more stable welfare outcomes despite lower peak efficiency. These findings reveal a fundamental trade-off between economic efficiency and robustness in non-stationary resource systems. The welfare gains from economically optimal harvest rules depend critically on investments in monitoring and governance capacity, implying that optimal policy design ought to jointly consider harvest rules and the institutions that support timely information and responses.