Quota Regulations Research Articles

Historical Review of Commercial Fishery Regulations for Striped Bass (Morone saxatilis Walbaum) in Massachusetts

Since the arrival of Pilgrims in 1620, Morone saxatilis (Striped Bass) has been an important commercial fish species for residents of Massachusetts. Early attempts by the Plymouth Colony to develop fishery commerce by selling Striped Bass products to Spain failed. Viable domestic markets for Striped Bass were established by the 18th century and continue to present day. Application of laws to control the commercial harvest of Striped Bass to address local declines in abundance first appeared in the Massachusetts Acts and Resolves in the late 18th century, and most laws restricted the taking of Striped Bass by seines. In 1945, a temporary Massachusetts law prohibiting the taking of Striped Bass by any method other than hook-and-line was made permanent. More-restrictive size and quota regulations were not imposed until the early 1980s as inter-state conservation efforts responded to the declining trends in coastal stocks. In present day, the Striped Bass commercial fishery in Massachusetts is regulated by minimum size and quotas established under the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission's Striped Bass Management Plan and by state no-take days and daily bag limits.

Regulating fisheries under uncertainty

Regulator uncertainty is decisive for whether price or quantity regulation maximizes welfare in fisheries. In this paper, we develop a model of fisheries regulation that includes ecological uncertainly, variable economic uncertainty as well as structural economic uncertainty. We aggregate the effects of these uncertainties into a single welfare measure for comparing tax and quota regulation. It is shown that quotas are always preferred to fees when structural economic uncertainty dominates. Since most regulators are subject to this kind of uncertainty, this result is a potentially important qualification of the pro-price regulation message dominating the fisheries economics literature. We also believe that the model of a fishery developed in this paper could be applied to the regulation of other renewable resources where regulators are subject to uncertainty either directly or with some modification.

Recreational Postrelease Mortality of Lake Trout in Lakes Superior and Huron

AbstractThe effectiveness of fishing regulations that result in the release of some angler‐caught fish depends on accurate knowledge of the postrelease mortality of those individuals. In the Laurentian Great Lakes, Lake TroutSalvelinus namaycushare a major component of recreational fisheries; across large regions of the lakes, they are managed with length limit and daily quota regulations assuming a 15% postrelease mortality rate. Due to concerns regarding the accuracy of that rate, we conducted a tagging study to estimate Lake Trout postrelease mortality in Lakes Superior and Huron, and we examined environmental and fishing factors that influenced the return rates of tagged fish. The basic study design was to compare tag return rates between two groups: (1) a treatment group comprising fish that were caught and released by anglers; and (2) a control group comprising fish that were caught via trap net and released. Tag return rates for the angler‐caught group were evaluated in relation to depth of capture, surface temperature at release (ST), fishing method, anatomical hook site, play time, handling time, and barotrauma. Tag return rates for angler‐caught fish declined significantly with increasing ST; the other factors’ effects on tag return rates were generally small. For Lake Superior, model‐averaged (Akaike's information criterion) postrelease mortality estimates incorporating ST were 15.0% (SE = 5.6%) at STs less than 10°C, 42.6% (SE = 3.0%) at STs of 10–16°C, and 43.3% (SE = 3.6%) at STs greater than 16°C. Model‐averaged estimates for Lake Huron were 52.5% (SE = 26.8%) at STs less than 10°C, 45.2% (SE = 14.0%) at STs of 10–16°C, and 76.4% (SE = 5.4%) at STs greater than 16°C. Based on these findings, alternative fishery management regulations that limit recreational catch‐and‐release angling of Lake Trout in the Great Lakes may be prudent. Current management policies based on an assumed 15% postrelease mortality are likely underestimating the total numbers of Lake Trout that are removed by recreational anglers.Received January 26, 2017; accepted April 29, 2017 Published online June 26, 2017

Institutional Correlates with Female Board Representation: A Research Note

Gender equality on boards is a global and highly politicized issue. To this day, there is considerable cross-country variation in female board representation. We examine institutional supply- and demand-side factors associated with this issue. Our results indicate that a societal climate of gender equality contributes to more women on boards, mainly through fostering the supply of suitable candidates. Therefore, the glass ceiling should be improved through a societal supply-side effort which needs to complement demand-side (quota) regulation.

The impact of gender quotas in leadership in Norwegian organised sport

ABSTRACTThe purpose of the article is to investigate the impact of gender quotas as a means to equalise the gender representation in the Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sport (NIF), with particular attention to the composition of executive boards. According to NIF's here. Law Book, a certain number of both genders is required when electing boards and committees at all levels in the organisation. The law also states rules for exemption when not fulfilled. Based on qualitative interviews the study explores how the quota regulation is practised at various levels in the organisation. The results revealed that interviewees from the higher levels (sport federations and regional confederations) were well aware of the quota regulation, less so on the club level. To the question whether the quota regulation guided the composition of the boards, most of the federations and all the regional confederations followed the rule, at the club level about two-thirds of the boards were composed in accordance with the regulation. The results are discussed in relation to criteria for ‘strong’, ‘moderate’ and ‘weak’ regulation, which in terms of fulfilment appears ‘strong’ at the highest level in the organisation, and ‘moderate’ or ‘weak’ at the club level.

Affirmative action policies in job advertisements for leadership positions: How they affect women's and men's inclination to apply

AbstractThis research investigates how affirmative action policies in job advertisements for leadership positions affect women's and men's inclination to apply. Management students (N = 389) received advertisements that differed in the strictness of announced gender policies: no statement, women explicitly invited to apply, preferential treatment of equally qualified women, or quota of 40% women. When women were treated preferentially, female participants reported higher self‐ascribed fit, which resulted in higher inclinations to apply compared with the control condition and with men. However, when quota regulations were active, female participants showed neither an increased self‐ascribed fit nor higher inclinations to apply. Interestingly, the underlying mechanism was not different when a quota regulation or no statement was announced: participants with higher agency levels reported higher inclinations to apply owing to an increase in self‐ascribed fit. This study provides evidence that only some preferential treatment policies may be successful in increasing women's interest in leadership positions.

Voting for Women in Belgium's Flexible List System

Proportional electoral systems tend to be more beneficial for women's descriptive representation than majority systems. However, within proportional systems the gender equality of election outcomes differs, highlighting the importance of studying the actual use of electoral provisions in proportional representation (PR) systems. Therefore, we investigate the determinants of voting for female candidates in Belgium's local elections. This case is particularly interesting given the equal number of men and women on the candidate lists due to quota regulations, the possibility to cast multiple preference votes (lowering competition), and the high visibility of these local elections and its candidates. At the individual level, we find that women are more likely than men to vote for several women, yet same-sex voting is more common among men. Politically sophisticated respondents vote more often for candidates of both sexes. Against our expectations, a left-wing orientation does not increase the likelihood of voting for women. At the electoral district level, a larger supply of women at the top list position increases the chance to vote for this top woman, but there is no spillover effect to women lower on the list. District magnitude affects the number of preference votes but, against expectations, not the likelihood of voting for women.

Gender discrimination before mandated quotas? Evidence from Norway: 1989–2002

Is the low percentage of women on boards due to discrimination? Discrimination has a time dimension; it is repeated period after period and is thus highly persistent. This persistence is tested with data from Norway before quota regulations were instituted in 2003. The data consist of an unbalanced panel sample of all non-financial listed companies from 1989 to 2002. Persistence implies a serial correlation close to one. The main finding is low persistence, implying no discrimination in the sample period. The lack of significant estimates for managerial power supports the persistence result. The main result is also robust to varying the definition of female representation.

Gender Quotas for Corporate Boards in Norway

The gender quota reform for corporate boards, first adopted in Norway in 2003 and fully implemented from 2008, has had great repercussions. A wave of diffusion of corporate board quota legislation has swept across Europe, and some other parts of the world. This paper departs from the ongoing European processes of gender quotas for corporate boards being in the making, and examines how the Norwegian expansion of gender quota regulation from the public sector to the corporate world was made possible. The strong tradition in Norway to introduce gender quota arrangements to promote gender balance is emphasized in particular. The paper addresses national preconditions and processes. Central questions are: How does this reform fit with the Norwegian gender equality policy tradition? And what external factors – and institutional tensions – facilitated the policy process? What kind of problem(s) did the gender quota legislation aim to solve? What were the main positions in public and political debates surrounding the policy process? What was the role of policy agency for the result of the policy process?

From Voluntary Party to Legal Electoral Gender Quotas in Slovenia: The Importance and Limitations of Legal and Institutional Mechanisms

When in Slovenia after the first multi-party election in National Assembly (NA) 1992 the share of women MPs dropped dramatically and did not changed a lot during the 1990s women activists and left-oriented female politicians started a struggle for an effective measure to improve this situation. First proposals to introduce quotas for internal party bodies and national election came from women in the center and left-wing political parties but with no visible effect for the presence of women in elected political bodies. It was only when legal quotas have been introduced that they brought significant changes in the representation of women in Slovene politics. This paper will focus on the importance of legal and institutional mechanisms that brought up more women in politics in the last elections at all levels but also on the limitations in the functioning of the quota regulations in the Slovene political and institutional context.

Debates on Women's Representation in Austria. Or: The Development of the Pitfalls of a Conservative Gender Regime

Nearly 30 years after the first gender quota regulation was introduced in Austria and the establishment of gender equality legislation and institutions, the proportion of women in public offices rose within this time, but has stagnated roughly at 30% for the recent years. To understand this cleavage of the gender equality claim and the stagnation regarding women’s participation in decision-making processes, we will critically explore the gender quota policies in Austria from the perspective of substantive equality and gender democracy. Gender quota claims inherently entail the potential to deepen democracy and transforming societies towards more substantive justice and equality. To be able to analyse if and how gender quota regulations can become transformative measures, we would like to argue for a stronger theorization of the concept of gender regime to more deeply and precisely understand the workings and specifics of power relations within a society supporting gender inequalities as well as to assess possibilities of change. Taking Austria’s debates about women’s representation as an example, the paper will develop the argument that a conservative gender regime with elements fostering an corporate, breadwinner model and difference-narrative orientated topography will very unlikely implement gender quota regulations as transformative measures, but will try to integrate and shape them accordingly, unless the meaning of quota regulations are framed and understood to support the logic of the gender regime or an element of the gender regime in the process of changing. As a conclusion, the reverberations of Austria’s conservative gender regime will be assessed in regards to the implementation of its quota regulations, suggesting that transformative politics needs to include and consider the specific relational logic of the gender regime to transmit its transformative leverage.

Was macht eine effiziente Gleichstellungspolitik aus? Das Instrument Frauenquote im internationalen Vergleich

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Size selection of whitefish (Coregonus maraena) in a pontoon trap equipped with an encircling square mesh selection panel

Many fishing methods result in significant catches of non-target species or individuals that are too small to be retained for economic values or within quota regulations. In the Baltic Sea trap fishery, the major problem is the bycatch of juvenile and non-marketable whitefish (Coregonus maraena) which constitutes a threat to the sustainability of the fishery and a time-consuming problem for the fishers. This study evaluates the effectiveness of a modified fish trap in reducing such bycatch. An encircling selection panel consisting of 50×50mm square mesh netting was installed in a pontoon fish chamber of a salmon/whitefish trap. Comparative fishing was conducted against a control trap without selection panel in the inshore waters of the Bothnian Sea. Comparisons of catch compositions between the traps showed that there was a 72% reduction in juvenile whitefish catch in the experimental trap. The length at 50% retention (30.1cm) corresponded well to the minimum market size (>30cm) of whitefish that are desired for the local market. Fishers are advised to use a netting panel of 50×50mm square mesh for their traps to reduce undersized whitefish. The results are important for the sustainability of whitefish stocks in the Baltic Sea.

Quota disputes and subsistence whaling in Qeqertarsuaq, Greenland

ABSTRACTIn Qeqertarsuaq (Disco Island), northwest Greenland, local disputes about the allocation of annual whaling quotas for beluga and narwhals feature as a source of conflict between state-imposed categories of occupational and non-occupational hunters. The national authorities’ co-management regime for the regulation of whale quotas has triggered the creation of new socio-economic groupings and compartmentalised respective groups of hunters in the process. Although the rigid legal categories have impacted upon the social unity and conduct of whaling in Qeqertarsuaq, and remain difficult to navigate, local whalers and their families nevertheless improvise and mould their interests around the legal frameworks in everyday interpretations of national and municipal quota allocations. The article argues that, in the process of receiving and interpreting annual quota allocations, hunters and their families draw on locally varying environmental and ecological circumstances and that their negotiation of current regulations, in turn, suggests a further consideration of the social aspects as these inform local knowledge about whales and wider socio-economic circumstances governing whaling in Qeqertarsuaq. In reviewing local receptions of annual quota allocations, the article assesses how whaling regulations are not just about the management of whale stocks but also about the management of whalers and their families and how this then calls for increased recognition of the fact that issues of social sustainability are intricately tied to contemporary concerns for environmental sustainability in Arctic whaling.

IT TAKES TIME: THE LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF GENDER QUOTA

We have estimated the changes in parties' behaviour following the introduction of quota regulations in Belgium. We expected to find a curvilinear effect: shortly after the introduction, women candidates would be worse off due to, amongst others, reluctance of the party elite to support women in the electoral contest. But after some time, their situation would improve—we hypothesise—either because parties become more convinced of women's qualities or because of strategic considerations. Our results do show an initial setback followed by a modest increase, but this increase takes longer than we initially assumed.

Implications of a Discard Ban in Multispecies Quota Fisheries

We present an analysis of quota regulation and discarding in multispecies fisheries, explicitly taking into account the costs of non-compliance with quotas and a possible discard ban, as well as the costs of selective fishing (avoidance effort). We examine the impact of a discard ban on vessels’ profit maximising behaviour, in particular where species quotas are not set in proportion to their availability on the fishing grounds, considering both non-tradeable quotas and ITQs. We show the interdependence between penalty rates for both discards and over-quota landings in determining quota market outcomes. We find that quota prices are sensitive to penalty rates and to the presence of restrictive quotas for “choke” species.

Relative trap efficiency for recreationally caught eastern Australian blue swimmer crab (Portunus pelagicus) and associated injury and mortality of discards

Australian recreational fishers targeting Portunus pelagicus are regulated by unverified gear restrictions which, combined with size, sex and quota regulations, result in >40% of their catches being discarded; all with unknown fate. To address these issues, we investigated the relative efficiency and temporal selectivity of “round”, “rectangular” and “wire” pots, and “hoop nets” set for 3, 6, and 24h and the subsequent injury, physiological stress and mortality (in cages with controls over three days) of discarded P. pelagicus (37–85mm carapace length – CL). Undersized (<60mm CL) and ovigerous P. pelagicus comprised 22% and 4% of the total catch. Irrespective of soak time, round pots caught significantly more P. pelagicus and teleost bycatch. Five percent of individuals lost 1–3 appendages, usually during disentanglement, and only 1.1% of discarded P. pelagicus died (all within 24h). Haemolymph parameters were mostly affected by biological, rather than technical factors. The results support the mandatory discarding of P. pelagicus, but pot selectivity might be improved via escape vents or larger mesh sizes.

Pushed Toward the Exit? How Female MPs Leave Parliament

Worldwide, politicians devote increasing attention to the sociodemographic representativeness of political institutions. The underrepresentation of specific groups (and of women in particular) in political institutions is a democratic problem (Phillips 1995). To counter the lack of representativeness of political institutions, measures have been adopted to increase the influx of female politicians in parliaments and governments. Among others, quota regulations have been implemented in several countries in recent years (Dahlerup 2007; Krook 2007).

Possible Relationships between the South African Captive-Bred Lion Hunting Industry and the Hunting and Conservation of Lions Elsewhere in Africa

The trophy hunting of lions is contentious due to increasing evidence of impacts on wild populations, and ethical concerns surrounding the hunting of captive-bred lions in South Africa. The captive-bred lion hunting industry in South Africa has grown rapidly while the number of wild lions hunted in other African countries has declined. In 2009 and 2010, 833 and 682 lion trophies were exported from South Africa, respectively, more than double the combined export (2009, 471; 2010, 318) from other African countries. There has been an associated increase in the prevalence of the export of lion bones from South Africa: at least 645 bones/sets of bones were exported in 2010, 75.0% of which went to Asia. Such trade could be problematic if it stimulated demand for bones from wild lions or other wild felids. Captive-bred lion hunting differs from wild lion hunting in that lions are hunted in smaller areas (49.9 ± 8.4 km 2 compared to 843 to 5933 km 2 , depending on the country), hunts are cheaper (US$20 000–40 000 compared to US$37 000–76 000 [excluding the costs of shooting other species and government charges]), shorter (3.3 compared to 14–21 days), success rates are higher (99.2% compared to 51.0–96.0%), and trophy quality is higher (skull length + breadth = 638.8 compared to 614–638 cm). Most clients perceive captive-bred and wild lion hunting to be different products but there is some overlap in markets: 48.7% of clients that had hunted captive-bred lions showed no preference regarding the type of future hunts. Owing to the size of the captive-bred hunting industry, even marginal overlap in demand could affect wild lion hunting significantly. If captive-bred lion hunting were ever prohibited, a transfer of demand to wild lion hunts could lead to elevated off-takes with negative impacts on wild populations. However, if off-takes of wild lions were held constant or reduced through effective regulation of quotas, increased demand could increase the price of wild lion hunts and strengthen financial incentives for lion conservation. These possibilities should be considered if future efforts are made to regulate captive-bred lion hunting.

Parytet płci w ujęciu prawnoporównawczym

The purpose of this article is to present one of the legal method of so-called “compensatory privilage”, known as parity of gender, which is used to increase the number of women in representative organs elected by people. Firstly, there are analised from the theoretical perspective diff erent methods of quota systems which are used in legal systems all over the world, especially election quotas, such as parities in purely sense, quotas, “zipping”, “twinning” and all-women shortlists (AWS). Secondly, the issue of parities is described in connection with the law of the European Union and the international law, with the general conclusion that both legal systems allow countries to introduce parity regulations to their legal systems but any of them requires to do so. Detailed discusion of quota regulations existing in legal systems in France, Spain, Belgium, Portugal and Italy suggests the thesis that success of quota regulations depends on few elements such as existing of legal rule which guaratees not only appropriate percent of positions on electoral lists for women but also guarantees relatively high positions for them on that lists. Furthermore, the issue of sanctions taken when political parties break quota rules is of a great importance. Last but not least, the article is presented the problem of uncontitutionality of the election quotas in Poland. Especially many members of the polish constitutional law doctrine claim that quotas are contradictory to such constitutional principles as the principle of equality before the law for all citizens, the principle of equality of rights between men and women, the princile of free elections and the freedom of political parties. Normal 0 21 false false false PL X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:Standardowy; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Times New Roman,serif;}