Food and fraud: On the Codfather and harvest mislabeling

Details

• Journal Title:
  The RAND Journal of Economics
• Personal Author:
  DePiper, G. ; Holzer, J.
• NOAA Program & Office:
  NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) ; NEFSC (Northeast Fisheries Science Center)
• Description:
  We study incentives to mislabel output in multispecies fisheries managed by tradeable catch shares. Firms can save quota costs by misreporting species harvested, as seen in criminal proceedings against the Codfather. We show that price elasticities for the abundant species reported in the cheating will be higher for compliant than non-compliant firms. Using data from the New England groundfish fishery, we test this prediction using a latent class hedonic price equation to identify compliant versus non-compliant firms. We then estimate multi-output technologies for compliant and noncompliant firms to identify differences in substitution possibilities. Our empirical results align with theoretical expectations and are robust to placebo tests.
• Keywords:
  Elasticity (Economics) Fisheries Food Fraud Groundfishes Prices
• Source:
  The RAND Journal of Economics, 55: 463-498
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1111/1756-2171.12476
• Format:
  PDF
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  New England
• Rights Information:
  Accepted Manuscript
• Compliance:
  Submitted
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:ec2af5db9502cabbcc9c94e387bc66f81a2b9b1c255906d84d0249a28cc407df742b1089d8e0776986761153926ad76b34654765d707b20d34bf3de84ac4e61a
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/66591/noaa_66591_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 2.18 MB ]