Overfishing of red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico has significantly increased lately. A major regulation to reduce the overfishing is Total Allowable Catches (TAC) in combination with a season closure. The restrictions on entry lead to an inefficient outcome, however, because the resource is not used by the fishermen who value it the most. As an alternative to restricting entry, transferable rights (TR) programs are being increasingly considered. Under a TR program, a market is created to trade a right to use a resource and the total benefits of the participants are maximized through such a trade. The principal objective of this dissertation is to comprehensively assess economic and biological consequences of the red snapper fishery for the TR program. To date the literature lacks sufficient discussion of how recreational TR programs would function. I, therefore, propose an economically desirable institutional framework for the TR program in the recreational fishery. I draw some lessons from hunting programs and applications of other TR programs to find better schemes for the TR program in the recreational fishery.This dissertation uses theoretical and empirical models as well as institutional settings to develop the TR program. A theoretical model is provided to investigate which unit of measurement for the TRs is preferable. For empirical models I first estimate an empirically based recreation demand that incorporates TR permit demand and then develop a simulation submodel using the estimated demand. I find price instruments, such as fees or TR programs, are very efficient to reduce fishing trips but they also lead to distributional impacts on trips by low income (or low cost) anglers. Partial simulation results indicate that an efficiency benefit of the TR program would be significant because recreational trip demand in the current closed season is not trivial. I conclude that the TR program in the recreational fishery will economically and biologically provide a great deal of merit to reduce the overfishing situation and a substantial efficiency gain to Gulf anglers. Some institutional barriers, especially from the large transaction cost can also be overcome if electronic systems or the Internet are used.

abstract: Three demand systems were estimated to examine demand sensitivity and welfare changes for each commodity under study. In the first essay, a Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QUAIDS) was used to examine the effect of the Fukushima Daichi nuclear disaster on the demand for imported pelagic fish in the domestic Japanese market. The effect of the Fukushima Daichi nuclear disaster was measured using changes in demand after the disaster as well as measures of changes in social welfare changes caused by the disaster. A significant effect of the disaster on demand sensitivity measures was found, but no significant changes in welfare. In the second essay, a differential demand system examined the effect of exchange rate fluctuations on the demand for fresh tomatoes in the U.S. Market. It was found that the U.S. Dollar-Mexican Peso exchange rate had a significant positive effect on the demand for Mexican fresh tomatoes. In the third essay, a Hurdle Negative Binomial demand system was estimated for recreational trips to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. This model was estimated using Bayesian methods to obtain parameter estimates that could not be obtained by maximum likelihood. The parameters were used to calculate recreational welfare measures for trips to seventy-two entry points. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Business Administration 2017

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This dissertation considers three topics under the themes of wetland restoration, urban sprawl, and recreation demand employing spatial data and analysis. A key question addressed in the first essay is how we can identify priority areas for wetlands restoration along the Louisiana coast under the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act by estimating amenity values received by nearby residents from hypothetical wetlands restoration projects. The second essay evaluates the effectiveness of alternative land-use policy variables for controlling development in a sprawling metropolitan area during two extreme market conditions. The third essay estimates the effect on consumer welfare from improved satisfaction of recreation information availability.