TY - JOUR T1 - Hidden Flexibility: Institutions, Incentives, and the Margins of Selectivity in Fishing JF - Land Economics JO - Land Econ SP - 169 LP - 195 DO - 10.3368/le.91.1.169 VL - 91 IS - 1 AU - Joshua K. Abbott AU - Alan C. Haynie AU - Matthew N. Reimer Y1 - 2015/02/01 UR - http://le.uwpress.org/content/91/1/169.abstract N2 - The degree to which selectivity in fisheries is malleable to changes in incentive structures is critical for policy design. We examine data for a multispecies trawl fishery before and after a transition from management under common-pool quotas to a fishery cooperative and note a substantial shift in postcooperative catch from bycatch and toward valuable target species. We examine the margins used to affect catch composition, finding that large- and fine-scale spatial decision making and avoidance of night-fishing were critical. We argue that the poor incentives for selectivity in many systems may obscure significant flexibility in multispecies production technologies. (JEL Q22, Q28) ER -