Abstract
Existing methods of combating the shadow economy do not always give reliable results. This is particularly true for the illegal use of renewable natural resources. In some parts of the Northwest Pacific basin, illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing has become an issue of growing concern for the sustainability of resource management, ecology, and the social environment. Many factors combine to produce these harmful phenomena. The complex legal rights for shared natural marine resources, the weak capacity of state institutions, and the lack of international cooperation between exporters and importers are all relevant. These factors can be eliminated by supplementing the “traditional” analysis of the shadow economy with new data mined from the media. For the crab harvesting regions of Russia, long-lasting benefits can be achieved through improvements in governance, accountability, and public awareness, or more specifically, through extensive mass media coverage of relevant topics. We argue that in the Russian Pacific, levels of illegal crab harvesting and smuggling correlates closely to the frequency of media references. The results suggest possible applications of mass media analysis: developing additional metrics for the dynamics of shadow economies; and the formulation of effective policy recommendations for sustainable fishing.
Highlights
How to evaluate, analyze, and eliminate the shadow economy is a complex theoretical and practical problem
Let us take a closer look at the potential benefits of studying the shadow economy through the media, in contrast with the comparison of total allowable catch (TAC) with total imports that were used, to confront the Russian crab problem
None of the papers we found were related to mass media and its use to measure a shadow economy
Summary
Analyze, and eliminate the shadow economy is a complex theoretical and practical problem. The complications multiply when the shadow activity crosses national borders and involves illegal trade in marine, forest, and other shared natural resources that are difficult to regulate In these cases, the existing methods of combating the shadow sector do not give the anticipated results and additional research and policy tools are needed. One strategy that would appear to be effective is improving governance, accountability, and public awareness Attaining these goals makes the development of independent mass media and press freedom indispensable parts of a sustainable society. In addition to the quantitative data, the published materials both provide information on and shape public opinion, which in turn influences the creation and structuring of government response All these factors confirm the importance of studying the relationship between the media and the development of shadow activity, both from theoretical and practical points of view
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