VALUE OF PREDICTING ENVIRONMENTAL VARIATION IN FISHERY MANAGEMENT

摘要

Decision-makers are often concerned with forecasts of environmental variables. Inaccordance with this the quality of forecasts is often discussed. The interest in forecastsalso show up in much modeling activity. However, the value of forecasts in terms ofimproved quality of decisions is not extensively studied. In this article we investigatethe value of forecasts by the use of stochastic, dynamic optimization. The case isNortheast Arctic cod (Gadus Morhua) in the Barents Sea. We find that the value ofideal forecasts, when used to their full potential, is around 3 to 5 percent improvementin expected net present value. More realistic forecasts lead to improvements less thanone percent. For practical purposes, it is only the forecast for the coming year thatmatters, long-term forecasts are of no use because the managed fishery is very flexible.These findings suggest that highly simplified forecasts can be used in models. Theconclusions are likely to be somewhat sensitive to choice of model, a theme for furtherresearch.