Conference Agenda

Property rights-based management is widely used to improve efficiency in natural resource sectors such as fisheries. In catch share programs, harvesting rights are allocated to individuals or firms and traded in markets, with prices reflecting both economic outlooks and regulatory constraints. To address equity and social concerns, many programs impose restrictions on transferability, such as limits on consolidation, geographic trade, or harvesting technology, which reduce efficiency. Although such tradeoffs between efficiency and social objectives are common, there is limited empirical evidence on how these constraints affect quota valuation, which are often not publicly observable. We analyze how transferability restrictions affect quota values in a large Norwegian catch-share fishery. Using a novel dataset linking all vessel and quota transactions from 2009 to 2017, we estimate a hedonic pricing model that recovers the capitalized value of quota rights embedded in fishing-bundle transactions. This allows us to quantify the equity–efficiency tradeoff associated with Norway’s coastal cod quota policy. In particular, we find large and systematic differences in marginal quota values across regulatory groups, where quotas associated with tighter consolidation caps have substantially lower marginal valuations. Geographic restrictions also affect markets, though their effects are modest relative to the impact of consolidation caps.

In the creation of new environmental markets, prices for newly created assets must be discovered by market participants. We study price formation in newly created catch share markets, focusing on how relative prices received by small and large quota holders evolve as markets mature. Using transaction-level data from New Zealand individual transferable quota fisheries, we document substantial and persistent price discounts for smaller sellers in permanent quota sales. In contrast, price differences in lease markets are smaller and less systematic over time. Event-time analyses show that seller-size-related price gaps remain pronounced in sales markets well beyond program inception, while lease markets exhibit weaker and less stable patterns. These findings highlight the role of contract structure in shaping price dispersion in decentralized resource markets.

As marine protected areas (MPAs) expand under global targets such as 30x30, rigorous evidence on community impacts remains limited. We estimate the effect of MPAs on multidimensional well-being in coastal Indonesia, focusing on villages within 10 km of MPAs in Papua and West Papua. Using village-level panel data and a staggered difference-in-differences design that exploits variation in MPA timing over three decades, we measure well-being with the Multidimensional Well-being Index (MWI). MPA establishment is associated with higher MWI, with larger gains for villages near older MPAs. The results highlight pathways for conservation to support both biodiversity and development goals locally.

Managing natural resources with output quotas or property rights can be costly and requires strong state capacity. In many developing settings, the most feasible formal policy is to regulate inputs, making compliance central. I develop a stylized size-structured model of a tropical open-access fishery to compare two compliance tools: increased enforcement effort and subsidies for nets with legal mesh size. The model characterizes how each policy affects incentives, entry, and stock structure. I derive conditions under which a subsidy outperforms enforcement, improving biological and economic outcomes even when the subsidy encourages additional entry, clarifying tradeoffs regulators unable to control outputs.