Rent Dissipation in Chartered Recreational Fishing: Inside the Black Box

equilibrium. However, they also face lower stock levels which may counteract or even outweigh
these benefits. Furthermore, induced distortions in non-catch quality may tip the balance in
favor of either regime without further empirical context for the model. In other words, it is far
from clear that consumers of charter and headboat services would be better off under a
rationalized system without some redistribution of the rents. This finding is of considerable
importance for the political economy of the rationalization process and deserving of much more
elaboration, both conceptually and empirically .

IV. The “Optimal” Corrective Policy

To mimic the necessary conditions of the efficient outcome in the steady state a policy or
set of policies must explicitly or implicitly levy the following corrective taxes (where we have
substituted out for D ^* using (7) and scaled taxes to logical units and levying periods):

τ_D* =λSS[φ(H(XSS,q(zq,N))-L)+L],
τ_L = λ_SS (1-φ),

τ_N = λ_SSNφH_qq_N ,

τ_z(i) = λ_SS ND_MAXφH _q q_z(i), ∀i = 1,..., Q
τN_V =MB(NVNDMAX,H(XSS,q(zq,N)),
-c(z_q,z_s,N,D_MAX,w,r).

The first tax can be thought of as a “user fee” for access to for-hire recreational fishing
and is presented at the resolution of an individual angler-day. The optimal tax on days simply
reflects the full mortality impact of the trip including both discards and landings. It is
noteworthy that the importance of harvest (and by implication the importance of stock size,
angler density and catch-augmenting inputs) in determining τ_D* declines for stocks with low
discard mortality. An interesting implication of this finding is that both the intensive and

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