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On the Contributions of Colin Clark to Fisheries Economics

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Abstract

We trace the contributions of Colin Clark from his first book and articles published in the mid-1970s to date and link them to the six papers contained in this Special Issue and the larger fisheries economics literature. We highlight the impacts of Clark’s contributions on the theory, empirical, policy and management of fisheries, ranging from particular fisheries applications right through to global studies of the economics of fishing. Our conclusion is that Colin Clark’s impact upon fisheries economics has been revolutionary and predict that 100 years from now, his classic contribution, Mathematical Bioeconomics will still be studied with care by economists.

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Notes

  1. Thus, for example, a recently published fisheries economics text, by Trond Bjørndal and Gordon Munro, The Economics and Management of World Fisheries, designed for academic students and practitioners, employs a capital-theoretic framework throughout (Bjørndal and Munro 2012).

  2. This study was re-published, along with a set of comments from prominent fisheries economists, in 2003 (Crutchfield and Zellner 2003).

  3. See Fig. 1.

  4. “... it should be clear that the biological overfishing case, in which [fishing] effort is pushed to the point where physical yield actually declines, could not arise under private ownership of the resource” (Crutchfield and Zellner 2003, p. 19).

  5. Optimal control theory was then coming into vogue among economists, particularly those specializing in capital theory.

  6. The term “Golden rule” arises from the fact that Eq. (6) can be seen as a version of the Modified Golden Rule of Capital Accumulation from capital theory.

  7. Clark has a more rigorous condition for extinction, in which, given that \(p - c(0) > 0\), extinction will be optimal if: \(\delta > 2\hbox {r}\). See Clark (1973a, (1973b).

  8. Although there are admittedly exceptions to the rule.

  9. According to Google scholar as at December 27, 2014, this book has been cited more than 4,800 times!

  10. It can be demonstrated that \(\hbox {x}_{\mathrm{MEY}}\), as shown in Fig. 1 is optimal, only if \(\delta =0\) (Clark and Munro 1975).

  11. See: n. 10.

  12. The produced and human capital employed in the fishery was highly malleable with respect to the fishery (Gréboval and Munro 1999).

  13. See Fig. 1.

  14. Gooday et al. 2010, talk about revenue from the fishery in terms of the discounted future revenue from the fishery. The dynamic aspects of the model employed are made explicit in Kompas et al. 2009.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

    Gordon R. Munro

  2. Fisheries Economics Research Unit, Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia, AERL 2202 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada

    Gordon R. Munro & U. Rashid Sumaila

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  1. Gordon R. Munro
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Correspondence to U. Rashid Sumaila.

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Munro, G.R., Sumaila, U.R. On the Contributions of Colin Clark to Fisheries Economics. Environ Resource Econ 61, 1–17 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-015-9910-4

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