Cod Today and None Tomorrow: The Economic Value of a Marine Reserve

Abstract

Using data from what was once one of the world’s largest capture fisheries, the northern cod fishery, the economic value of a marine reserve is calculated using a stochastic optimal control model with a jump-diffusion process. Counterfactual analysis shows that with a stochastic environment an optimal-sized marine reserve in this fishery would have prevented the fishery’s collapse and generated a triple payoff: raising resource rents even if harvesting was “optimal”; decreasing recovery time for the biomass to return to its former state, smoothing fishers’ harvests and resource rents; and lowering the chance of a catastrophic collapse following a negative shock. (JEL Q22, Q57)