On the Benefits of Including Age-Structure in Harvest Control Rules

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Web End = Environ Resource Econ (2016) 64:619641

DOI 10.1007/s10640-015-9891-3

Jos-Mara Da-Rocha Rosa Mato-Amboage

Accepted: 9 February 2015 / Published online: 24 February 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Abstract This paper explores the benets of including age structure in the control rule (HCR) when decision makers regard their (age-structured) models as approximations. We nd that introducing age structure into the HCR reduces both the volatility of the spawning biomass and the yield. Although the benets are lower at a fairly imprecise level, there are still major advantages for the actual precision with which the case study is assessed. Moreover, we nd that when age-structure is included in the HCR the relative ranking of different policies in terms of variance in biomass and yield does not differ. These results are shown both theoretically and numerically by applying the model to the Southern Hake shery.

Keywords Management strategy evaluation Harvest control rules Reference points

Stochastic age structured model

For helpful comments and suggestions we thank Cathy Dichmont, Pamela Mace, Andre Punt, Anna Rindorf and seminar and conference participants at Knowledge Based BioEconomy (KBBE) workshop on MICE models, multispecies models, and harvest strategies for lowinformation stocks at Victoria University (New Zealand), the 5th WCERE (World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economics) and the ICES Annual Science Conference 2014. All remaining errors are our own. Jos Mara Da Rocha gratefully acknowledges the nancial support from the European Commission (MYFISH, FP7-KBBE-2011-5,n 289257 and BIOTRIANGLE) and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (ECO2012-39098-C06-00).

J.-M. Da-Rocha (B)

Departamento de Fundamentos del Anlisis Econmico, Universidade de Vigo, Campus Universitario Lagoas-Marcosende, C.P. 36200 Vigo, Spaine-mail: [email protected]

J.-M. Da-Rocha

Centro de Investigacin Econmica, Instituto Tecnolgico Autonomo de Mxico (ITAM), Av. Camino Santa Teresa 930, Col. Hroes de Padierna, Del. Magdalena Contreras, C.P. 10700 Mxico, D.F., Mxico

R. Mato-Amboage

Environment Department, York University, Heslington Road, York YO10 5DD, UK e-mail: [email protected]

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620 J.-M. Da-Rocha, R. Mato-Amboage

1 Introduction

Fishery biologists have long called for economic models based on more complex,...