Regional economic analysis for North Pacific fisheries
Abstract
Although there are many studies of economic impacts of Alaska fisheries conducted by the Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC) Economic and Social Sciences Research (ESSR) group, none of the models used for these studies have been utilized by the economists and social scientists in Alaska Regional Office (AKRO), North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC), and other agencies who are tasked with evaluating the economic impacts of proposed fishery management policies. There are several reasons for this. First, there is a gap between the time when the analysts need the economic impact analysis for the policies at hand and the time when the model development is completed by ESSR and available for AKRO or Council analyses. Second, even when the models are available to the analysts, they may not be familiar with the structure of the models, and therefore, find it difficult to implement the models and interpret the results.
In order to address these issues, AFSC and AKRO economists launched a project to develop a web-based software application that the analysts, without in-depth knowledge of regional economic models, can be used to estimate the economic impacts of fishery management actions or environmental shocks. This project resulted in user-friendly software and a user manual. This report is intended for those analysts in ESSR, AKRO, and NPFMC who are not familiar with regional economic modeling but will use this software.
This report (i) introduces the basics of the regional economic models that are often used for economic impact analyses for fisheries, and (ii) provides a description of the model used in the software, called the Adjusted Demand-driven Multi-regional Social Accounting Matrix (MRSAM) model. Appendix B contains a user manual that provides step-by-step instructions on how to use the regional economic analysis web-based application software to model impacts of commodity-based shocks, industry-based shocks, or a combination of the two shocks..
