Use of Input‐Output Analysis in Fisheries Assessment

Benefit‐cost studies usually focus on estimation of willingness to pay by consumers for recreational activities while excluding willingness to pay by producers. Fisheries managers are often more interested in the income and employment effects of policies on producers than on how sport anglers value these policies. In this paper, I explore how the input‐output model, a major tool of regional economics, can be used to estimate producer surplus resulting from fisheries management policies. A properly specified input‐output model will generate estimates of marginal or net national income changes resulting from policy changes. However, many current empirical input‐output models use average data and generate marginal estimates only when average and marginal coefficients are equal.