Expanding groundfish production on the West Coast and in the
United States in total, over the past decade, has increased
competition in the groundfish market. During the same period,
regulations have evolved to control production in the groundfish
industry for the purpose of conserving the resource. Other
regulations exist to control certain aspects of the market for
groundfish. Such regulations are generally expected to have local
impacts. However, little consideration is usually given to the
impact regulations may have outside a local area. Indeed, since
market competition has increased so significantly in this industry,
the geographical distribution area has expanded considerably in
recent years. Inter-regional impacts should be considered when
regulations are established. The purpose of this research was to
examine the impact selected regulations may have on markets for
groundfish.
The hypothesis tested by this research is stated as the
following: regulations intended to impact local regions have no
more than a local affect. Stated another way, regulatory
authorities at state or regional levels generally intend to impose
regulations that do not impact regions other than those under their
jurisdiction. The test, then, is to determine if other regions are
affected by "localized" regulations.
The regulations to be examined include restriction or
alteration of production in a limited region and established
intra-state transportation rates (for seafood) that limit
competition in the state transportation market. Specifically,
alternative distribution patterns were generated in response to
postulated changes in: (1) the availability of groundfish in the
Oregon region and (2) California intra-state transportation rates to
reflect more competition in the seafood transportation market (lower
rates).
The hypothesis was tested by estimating demand equations for
groundfish, employing these in a spatial equilibrium model, and
subjecting the results to a sensitivity analysis.
The hypothesis testing consists of four parts, each
independently insufficient to reject the hypothesis. As a whole,
however, the four parts should provide enough evidence (although not
a statistical test) to reject the hypothesis. The results of the
research indicate rejection of the hypothesis was acceptable.
Indeed, several of the regions where no affect was expected in
response to the postulated changes showed significant impacts.
This research was a pioneering attempt. The results are not
conclusive, in part because of the absence of appropriate data.
However, the results were significant enough to indicate promising
possibilities for future research. In fact, a major contribution of
the work was to point out how this research technique can be
improved by refining inputs to the model and increasing its
complexity to reflect more of the available routes associated with
different product forms, product transport techniques and different
species.
The major result of the research was to indicate the need to
consider impacts which extend beyond the local market in
establishing regulations. / Graduation date: 1986
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/26746 |
| Date | 07 December 1983 |
| Creators | Earley, Jim V. |
| Contributors | Martin, Michael V. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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