The Value of Information in a Congested Fishery | Larry S Karp

Larry S Karp, Professor at the University of California at Berkeley in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Visiting Professor at the Grantham Research Institute.

He will give a seminar on The Value of Information in a Congested Fishery as well as providing a high level overview of some of his other recent work, much of which is climate-related. 

The Value of Information in a Congested Fishery with Gabriel Englander and Leo Simon

Abstract:

We model a fishery with potential congestion; fishers obtain both public and private signals about the location where the fish stock is densest. We extend the literature by including both a larger parameter region and correlation between public and private signals. We analytically determine the regions of parameter space where greater precision of public and/or private information increases welfare. Using high-resolution data from the world’s largest fishery, we estimate the structural parameters. Our point estimates imply that congestion is sufficiently important that increased precision of either public or private information lowers expected equilibrium profits.