Target Stock Research Articles

Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Certification of Arctic Fisheries: Processes and Outcomes

Certification according to private sustainability standards (ecolabelling) has become an important addition to public fisheries management in recent years. The major global ecolabel in terms of comprehensiveness and coverage is the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Fisheries Standard. Under the MSC Standard, the status of the fishery’s target stocks, its impact on the wider ecosystem and the effectiveness of its management system are assessed. Becoming and remaining certified requires continuous behavioural adaptation from fisheries through a fine-meshed system of conditions attached to certification. In this article, MSC certification of two clusters of fisheries in Arctic waters is discussed, one large- and one small-scale. In the Barents Sea cod and haddock fisheries, the main obstacle to certification has been the fisheries’ impact on endangered, threatened and protected (ETP) species and bottom habitats, and in order to remain certified beyond the first five-year certification period, the fishing companies have had to introduce a number of voluntary measures beyond what is required by law. In the local lumpfish fisheries in Greenland, Iceland and Norway, conditions attached to certification have been related to the effects of these fisheries on seabirds and marine mammals. Here essential parts of a management regime, such as biological reference points and harvest control rules, have come about as a direct result of MSC certification. MSC certification is no panacea, but it seems to have found a niche as a supplement to national legislation and international agreements.

Determining potential conflicts between small-scale fisheries and sea-cage fish farms in the Aegean Sea

Background. Fish farms attract both juvenile and adult wild fishes in great numbers and diversity. These wild fishes also become an easy target stock for local fishers, both professional and recreational. There are three groups of interest in this study, the fish farmers, small-scale fishermen (professional), and recreational fishers (mostly anglers but also spear fishers). This study was intended to determine conflicts derived from the adverse social and bioecological interactions from the perspective of both local fishermen and fish farmers and to determine the observed incidence of predators. Materials and methods. In this study, 48 randomly selected fish farms, 28 fishery cooperatives, and 33 fishing ports located close to aquaculture areas were visited for face-to-face interviews with the fishermen of small-scale fisheries (SSF) between July 2015 and July 2017. The main purpose of the survey questionnaire was to ask SSF fishermen for their opinion about offshore aquaculture and vice versa—ask the fish farmers about SSF, emphasizing issues potentially creating problems. Data were collected mainly on sociodemographic profiles, current problems, reciprocal conflict issues, the impact of offshore fish farming on SSF activities, and on bioecological interactions such as predator attacks and problems with farm fish escapes. Results. Approximately 77% of fishermen in Izmir and 71% of fishermen in Muğla declared that they had problems with the sea-cage fish farms. On the other hand, 40% of fish farmers in Izmir and 54% of fish farmers in Muğla reported problems with local SSF. The fishermen believe that in recent years, Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus), sea turtle (Caretta caretta), and invasive fish (pufferfish, etc.) populations have been increasing in Muğla. Additionally, 46% of Muğla fish farmers and 60% of Izmir fish farmers acknowledged cases of fishes escaping from sea-cages. In terms of the predators, 84% of Muğla and 75% of Izmir’s fishermen expressed their concerns regarding predator attacks on the sea-cage farms. Conclusion. Further studies, based on socioeconomic issues, are needed for better understanding the dimensions of incomes and economic losses of SSF and cooperation issues in the area where the interaction is high. We suggest that all stakeholders, small-scale fishermen, in particular, must be integrated with a management plan, and the cooperation among both fishing groups should be encouraged.

Choosing best practices for managing impacts of trawl fishing on seabed habitats and biota

AbstractBottom trawling accounts for almost one quarter of global fish landings but may also have significant and unwanted impacts on seabed habitats and biota. Management measures and voluntary industry actions can reduce these impacts, helping to meet sustainability objectives for fisheries, conservation and environmental management. These include changes in gear design and operation of trawls, spatial controls, impact quotas and effort controls. We review nine different measures and actions and use published studies and a simple conceptual model to evaluate and compare their performance. The risks and benefits of these management measures depend on the extent to which the fishery is already achieving management objectives for target stocks and the characteristics of the management system that is already in place. We offer guidance on identifying best practices for trawl‐fisheries management and show that best practices and their likelihood of reducing trawling impacts depend on local, national and regional management objectives and priorities, societal values and resources for implementation. There is no universal best practice, and multiple management measures and industry actions are required to meet sustainability objectives and improve trade‐offs between food production and environmental protection.

Do static and dynamic marine protected areas that restrict pelagic fishing achieve ecological objectives?

AbstractThere has been a recent proliferation of large‐scale marine protected areas (MPAs) containing pelagic habitats. These contribute substantially toward meeting the area‐based goal of Aichi Biodiversity Target 11 and to managing pelagic ecosystem pressures, including fishing. We assessed theoretical and empirical evidence for the achievement of ecological objectives by static and dynamic spatial management of pelagic fisheries. Exceptionally few studies have assessed ecological responses to MPAs that constrain pelagic fisheries, leaving substantial uncertainty over their efficacy. Assessments have provided a limited basis for causal inferences and have not evaluated whether other management tools would be more effective. Pelagic MPAs have relatively high promise to mitigate fisheries bycatch of species of conservation concern with “slow” life history traits and that form temporally and spatially predictable hotspots, and for some species, to protect habitats important for critical life history stages. It would be challenging to design MPAs to maintain absolute biomass levels of target stocks near targets and above limits: MPAs would need to be extensive to account for broad and variable distributions, and account for catch risk outside of the MPA, including from displaced fishing effort and fishing‐the‐line. For non‐overexploited stocks, which is the status of most target pelagic species and their prey, there would likely be little response in absolute stock biomass to an MPA. While pelagic MPAs have a higher promise of increasing target stocks’ local abundance, evidence with a robust basis for inferring causality is needed. Reducing fishing mortality of prey species might not affect the biomass of their pelagic predators because prey species experience light fishing pressure and because there may be a weak correlation between the absolute abundance of forage fish and their predators. There is an especially limited basis for predicting the effects of MPAs on fisheries‐induced evolution (FIE) in pelagic species. We describe how pelagic MPAs could be designed to achieve five ecological objectives without causing cross‐taxa conflicts and exacerbating FIE. To fill substantial gaps in knowledge, we prescribe counterfactual‐based modeling of time series data of standardized catch records to infer causation in assessments of ecological responses to pelagic MPAs.

West African reservoirs and their fisheries: An assessment of harvest potential

A major constraint to science-based fish stock management in West Africa is the lack of reliable data on target stocks. This especially holds true for inland fisheries, such as those that operate in reservoirs. Due to the low availability of resources and population data, and the limited number of fisheries experts in the region, state institutions and investigators rely heavily on simple catch statistics and empirical models for their estimations of fish production and potential yields. This paper reviews data from the FAO, and published articles and reports on West African reservoirs, with special reference to their morphometric and environmental features in relation to fish catch. In addition, we analyse primary data on three focus reservoirs. First, to improve and update available models of potential harvests from reservoirs, we regress fish catch data against reservoir surface area data for 30 reservoirs in West Africa, yielding the following equation: Catch (tonnes/year) = 17.3 × Area (km2)0.8626. The equation accounts for 95.7% of the variation observed in the fish catches. Analysis of covariance of small (<2 km2) and large (>2 km2) reservoirs shows no significant difference (F = 0.5895, p = 0.45) in the slopes of the two groups. Second, we apply multiple regressions to a sub dataset of 15 reservoirs with surface area and mean depth as predictors; and we also explore reservoir age as a further variable. We find that fisheries productivity is inversely correlated with both mean depth (r = -0.49) and surface area (r = -0.32), but there is no significant correlation found with reservoir age (r = 0.03).

Foreign investors’ trading behaviors around merger and acquisition announcements: Evidence from Korea

This study examines foreign investors’ trading behaviors around merger and acquisition (M&A) announcements in the Korean stock market (both KOSPI and KOSDAQ markets). We find evidence that foreign investors are more likely to buy target stocks with larger wealth effects on the KOSPI market. In contrast, our results reveal that both foreign and domestic investors are not able to identify target stocks with larger wealth effects on the KOSDAQ market. Further, we find that in response to M&A announcements, only foreign investors can find target stocks with greater subsequent returns on the KOSDAQ market, but not on the KOSPI market.

Species prioritisation for the development of multiannual management plans for the Basque demersal fishery

Multiannual management plans are increasingly used to manage fishery systems in Europe. Initially, they were focused on single species, however in the last decade mixed-fishery management plans have emerged to ensure sustainable exploitation of stocks and ecosystems. However, quantitative evaluations of the management plans are generally focused on data-rich and/or target stocks and most of the data-limited and/or bycatch species are not included. Even if they are not included in the evaluation, they could be at high risk of overexploitation or constrain the economic performance of the fishery. Thus, it is crucial to identify the species that should be included in the evaluation of multiannual management plans. The objectives of this study are to assess the potential risk of the species caught by the Basque demersal fishery following the productivity-susceptibility analysis approach, and to identify the most exploited, vulnerable, and/or economically important species for the Basque demersal fishery modifying an existing prioritisation approach. The prioritisation facilitates the selection of the species that should be considered in an integral evaluation of the Basque demersal fishery management plan. According to the results, including the top-ten ranked species in the evaluation of the Basque demersal fishery management plans would ensure an adequate evaluation of the management measures effects.

A Novel Approach to Short-Term Stock Price Movement Prediction using Transfer Learning

Stock price prediction has always been an important application in time series predictions. Recently, deep neural networks have been employed extensively for financial time series tasks. The network typically requires a large amount of training samples to achieve high accuracy. However, in the stock market, the number of data points collected on a daily basis is limited in one year, which leads to insufficient training samples and accordingly results in an overfitting problem. Moreover, predicting stock price movement is affected by various factors in the stock market. Therefore, choosing appropriate input features for prediction models should be taken into account. To address these problems, this paper proposes a novel framework, named deep transfer with related stock information (DTRSI), which takes advantage of a deep neural network and transfer learning. First, a base model using long short-term memory (LSTM) cells is pre-trained based on a large amount of data, which are obtained from a number of different stocks, to optimize initial training parameters. Second, the base model is fine-tuned by using a small amount data from a target stock and different types of input features (constructed based on the relationship between stocks) in order to enhance performance. Experiments are conducted with data from top-five companies in the Korean market and the United States (US) market from 2012 to 2018 in terms of the highest market capitalization. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of transfer learning and using stock relationship information in helping to improve model performance, and the proposed approach shows remarkable performance (compared to other baselines) in terms of prediction accuracy.

An Empirical Study of OmniAmerican Bancorp’s Merger with and into Southside Bancshares

In this paper, we investigate the short- and long-term wealth effect of OmniAmerican Bancorp’s merger with and into Southside Bancshares. Given that OmniAmerican Bancorp made a ‘take-me-over’ announcement four months before the merger negotiations commenced, which may have given rise to market anticipation, we have employed a longer short-term testing window in order to capture the price run-ups. We show that this acquisition increased OmniAmerican Bancorp’s shareholder wealth by $35.44 million whereas decreased Southside Bancshares’ shareholder wealth by $25.61 million. However, statistically insignificant abnormal returns were found in both the short and long terms for the shareholders of the combined entity, indicating the acquisition’s overall value-neutral nature. This finding appears consistent with the (on average) non-value-destroying results documented in the post-crisis merger wave, but it seems inconsistent with the value-enhancing results observed in intra-state commercial bank mergers. Assuming that gains from the revaluation of the combined value of the bidder and target stocks typically come from the merged entity’s incremental earnings, we conclude that the market’s value-neutral assessment was correct in terms of predicting no significant profit enhancement of the merged entity when full integration of OmniAmerican Bancorp into Southside Bancshares was achieved.

Stakeholder trust and holistic fishery sustainability assessments

Australia is considered world-leading in sustainable fisheries management. Despite this, public perceptions and trust in how fisheries are managed vary widely. Existing models of trust and community acceptance in extractive industries suggest transparently reporting on a wider range of sustainability issues than resource use and condition levels, or the status of target stocks in the case of fisheries, as a potential way to build public awareness and trust. Public perceptions of sustainability can be narrow or broad and related to different world views and perspectives about what is important. Here we investigate whether approaches such as Australia's conceptual ‘Healthcheck’ framework for fisheries sustainability reporting, could contribute to increasing public trust in fishery management. Interviews with 21 people who currently use (or would use) fisheries information in their professional work revealed interest in a wide range of sustainability issues and a desire for more easily accessible and trusted information. The interviews also revealed four common themes: Trust and distrust; Sustainability concerns and interpretations; Conflicts and values; and Fisheries information sources and knowledge gaps. These themes emphasise the need to take a broad view of sustainability and communication in fishery management, across the range of actors involved, to collaborate widely and build more engagement and relationships with the public in different forms. We use these findings to propose how the established model of trust and community acceptance of natural resource-based sectors could be applied to commercial fisheries and relate to other initiatives, such as the Sustainable Development Goals.

Strategic Decisions in Takeover Auctions

This essay reviews selected theories and empirical evidence describing how bidders and targets navigate four complex decisions involved in any corporate takeover attempt: (1) deal initiation, (2) pre-offer toehold acquisition, (3) offer price and revisions, and (4) the method of payment. We focus in particular on how first-price or English (ascending price) auctions with two competing bidders and a single (pivotal) seller help understand bidder and target incentives in each of these strategic decisions. While largely descriptive of tender offers for control, the auction framework also helps explain choices made in takeover negotiations where the outside option is the outcome of an open auction. Empirical findings include the following key observations: (1) A large fraction of control bids for public targets - about 50% - are initiated by the target and not the bidder. (2) Notwithstanding takeover premiums averaging 40+%, only a small fraction (less than 5%) of bidders acquire a partial ownership position (a toehold) in the target prior to bidding. However, when they do acquire a toehold, it is large (on average 20%). (3) Rival bids are observed in less than 10% of the contests, suggesting that the initial public bid deters further competition. When rival bidder do enter the auction, they do so surprisingly quickly - within two weeks of the initial bid on average - suggesting that bidder valuations are correlated. Bid jumps are large (around 30%), consistent with significant bidding costs. The evidence also supports the hypothesis that the pre-offer runup in the target's stock price includes an element of rational deal anticipation by the market, and that the runup is understood as such by the two parties in merger negotiations. (4) Contrary to theories of bidder opportunistic behavior, the likelihood that a given deal is paid in bidder stock is higher when the target is highly informed about the bidder's operations and so able to value the bidder shares more precisely. This evidence supports the (nested) alternative theory that the bidder's preference to pay in stock rather than in cash is driven by concerns with adverse selection on the target side of the deal. Also, the initial market reaction to the stock payment decision is such that there is no evidence of subsequent abnormal long-run performance for long-short portfolios sorted on cash- versus stock as the payment method.

Co‐viability of a Mediterranean demersal fishery affected by the discard ban under alternative management scenarios

AbstractThe joint viability, or co‐viability, of a Mediterranean Sea mixed demersal fishery was examined by applying a bioeconomic fisheries model to the main seven target stocks of the fishery under biological, social and economic constraints. The stocks of interest were hake, black‐bellied angler, deep‐water rose shrimp, red mullet, blue and red shrimp, Norway lobster and blue whiting, all of which were assessed as overexploited. Their combined production corresponds to 34% by volume and 52% by value of the landings of the demersal fishery studied. Simulation scenarios based on effort reduction, changes in the selectivity pattern and implementing a fisheries restricted area were compared over the simulation horizon of 2015–2030. The latter two scenarios were also examined in terms of full or partial compliance. The effect of a discard ban on the economy of the fleet was also analysed. The results show that the fishery is not co‐viable because some stocks are not viable in the projection period, but social and economic viability was ensured in all cases. As is often the case for mixed fisheries, a unique management measure is unlikely to improve the situation of all stocks simultaneously, but all the management measures tested are better than the status quo.

An ELECTRE III Based CBR Approach to Combinatorial Portfolio Selection

AbstractInvestors generally learn from historical data and use it to improve future investment decisions. However, existing portfolio selection research rarely considers such a concept. This paper proposes a novel approach to the combinatorial portfolio selection problem. Our solution employs the Case‐Based Reasoning (CBR) approach with ELECTRE III, based on the Industry Classification Benchmark standards. The target stocks are ranked based on their similarities to a reference case, allowing specified selection criteria. Similarities are calculated based on selected ELECTRE III metrics. Experimental results with the Stock Exchange of Thailand data show that our CBR approach with ELECTRE III outperforms the traditional method.

Beauties of the emperor: An investigation of a Chinese government bailout

We study the Chinese government's stock market bailout operation in 2015. We focus on the bailout's opaque nature and explore its unintended consequences in both asset prices and investor behavior. We find that: (1) the market overreacts to the bailout news under partial information, which leads to substantial mispricing until full information is revealed; (2) institutional investors possess an informational advantage over retail investors in uncovering the bailout's full scale and target stocks; (3) institutional investors react to the bailout news promptly; and (4) retail investors initially underreact to the bailout news but eventually overreact.

Foreign Investors’ Trading Behaviors around Merger and Acquisition Announcements: Evidence from Korea

This study examines foreign investors’ trading behaviors around merger and acquisition (M&A) announcements in the Korean stock market (both KOSPI and KOSDAQ markets). We find evidence that foreign investors are more likely to buy target stocks with larger wealth effects on the KOSPI market. In contrast, our results reveal that both foreign and domestic investors are not able to identify target stocks with larger wealth effects on the KOSDAQ market. Further, we find that in response to M&A announcements, only foreign investors can find target stocks with greater subsequent returns on the KOSDAQ market, but not on the KOSPI market.

Food Overfishing - The Cod Fishery in the Baltic Sea Through the Eyes of Aquaculture

A common goal of fisheries management and conservationists is to conserve natural resources productively or to restore the resources to this state. Fisheries management must furthermore ensure that fishing enterprises can operate profitably. In this respect, a lack of recruitment and discarding of small fish is a problem, but also an obvious contradiction and it is assumed that significantly higher would be possible. In order to maintain or achieve productivity, feed production of the ecosystem must be or be brought in line with feed consumption of the target stock. This was not the case in the eastern Baltic Sea in particular and there could be observed a density-dependent reduction in the growth rates. An improvement of the food supply in the sea can be achieved by reducing the number of recruits, an established method which is applied by analogy also in agriculture, gardening and forestry. Recruitment management allows the remaining part of the recruits to grow at the maximum rate, ensuring that comparatively little waste is generated. The reduction of recruits by discarding small fish is currently carried out in conjunction with the catch of the target species. In order to achieve the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) the fishing mortality was reduced and the mesh size was increased. This, however, increased also the food requirements of the fish remaining in the sea. Curiously, the food requirement is not taken into account in the model usually used to optimise the fishing pattern. As a consequence the model predicts ghost yields which cannot be realized in practice due to the lack of food. Here, two MSY fishing are compared with two fishing patterns which, according to conventional definition cause significant growth overfishing. The comparison shows that about three times the amount of feed is required per kg of fish produced if the stock is managed according MSY-criteria. If one compares the fishing pattern currently used with a proposed fishing pattern, minor disadvantages in terms of yield, but advantages in terms of revenue can be expected. The large mesh sizes used in this pattern make the so-called high-grading obsolete, but a reduction in recruits to around 50% is imperative. Therefore, it is proposed in addition to separate the reduction of recruitment from the actual fishing process in order to avoid that each individual fisherman has to process the unwanted small fish on his cutter.

How commercial fishing effort is managed

AbstractWild capture fisheries produce 90 million tonnes of food each year and have the potential to provide sustainable livelihoods for nearly 40 million people around the world (http://www.fao.org/3/a-i5555e.pdf). After decades of overfishing since industrialization, many global fish stocks have recovered, a change brought about through effective management. We provide a synthetic overview of three approaches that managers use to sustain stocks: regulating catch and fishing mortality, regulating effort and regulating spatial access. Within each of these approaches, we describe common restrictions, how they alter incentives to change fishing behaviour, and the resultant ecological, economic and community‐level outcomes. For each approach, we present prominent case‐studies that illustrate behaviour and the corresponding performance. These case‐studies show that sustaining target stocks requires a hard limit on fishing mortality under most conditions, but that additional measures are required to generate economic benefits. Different systems for allocation allow stakeholder communities to strike a locally acceptable balance between profitability and employment.

Mandatory Bids in China: You Can Lead a Horse to Water, But You Can't Make Him Drink

This paper studies mandatory bids in China against an institutional backdrop of restrictive IPO requisites. We find that virtually no shares held by external shareholders are tendered in mandatory bids for all the remaining shares. Mandatory bidders’ tactics to avoid tendering by public investors include pressing down their bid prices, and potential manipulation of target stock prices. In relation to economic impacts of mandatory bids, we document that market responds favorably to their announcements, and that targets’ operational performance improves in their wake, consistent with the theoretical prediction that mandatory bids induce efficient transfers of corporate control. Our research is among the earliest empirical works on the mandatory bid rule in a particular jurisdiction. It not only yields interesting results pertaining to the unique Chinese regulatory environment, but also generates useful insights about mandatory bids beyond China.

Impacts of small-scale fisheries on mangrove fish assemblages

AbstractThe data requirements and resources needed to develop effective indicators of fishing impacts on target stocks may often be great, especially for mangrove fisheries where, for example, tidal cycles sequentially flood and drain the habitat as a result of natural processes. Here, we used underwater video systems to evaluate the impact of small-scale fisheries on mangrove fish assemblages at four levels of fishing pressure (low, medium, high, and no pressure). The lowest values of species richness and abundance were recorded in the areas fished most intensively. Conversely, the highest species richness and the occurrence of larger-bodied fish were recorded in areas of reduced fishing activity, which was surprisingly similar to the “no fishing” areas. The slopes of the community size spectra steepened in response to exploitation, while the relative abundance of medium-sized fish (16–25 cm) declined. Fishing for local or regional markets, rather than subsistence, also led to a decrease in the abundance of larger fish (&amp;gt;41 cm). The marked response of population parameters to fishing pressure reflected the impact of unregulated small-scale fisheries on areas of mangroves. Fishery management practices that ignore contemporary changes in these environments are likely to overestimate long-term yields, leading to overfishing. Thus, size-based approaches to evaluating fishing pressure were suitable for detecting negative responses from the mangrove fish assemblages. A next step will be to integrate size- and species-based ecological approaches that provide mechanisms to address pronounced decreases in specific species as a more profitable indicator of fishing impacts on mangrove fish assemblages. This approach will allow the development of effective conservation and management strategies.

Inter-species quota flexibility – Exploring a new management tool in European Common Fisheries Policy

Inter-species quota flexibility (IQF) is a new management tool made available to fishery managers in the reformed European Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) launched in 2013. IQF regulates a limited transfer between stock-specific total allowable catches (TAC), the main measure of stock conservation in CFP set in accordance with precautionary or, where possible, analytically estimated levels of maximum sustainable yield (MSY). IQF is intended to mitigate the various potential conflicts in the management of multi-species fisheries resulting from stricter catch limitations, which, in turn, are due to the newly-introduced landing obligation for all catches of TAC-regulated stocks. In this paper, the management implications of inter-species flexibility are evaluated by modelling various scenarios of individual and multiple multi-species fisheries exploiting virtual stocks of different sizes and productivity. The results reveal that IQF is rather ineffectual if sustainable stock-specific management goals are similar in terms of exploitation rate. However, if these goals are modified in response to potential ecological conservation needs or market considerations – which would reflect reality more closely – IQF may offer a frequently applicable and effective tool. Simulations carried out in this study demonstrate that IQF may support the use of quotas by increasing fishing opportunities of by-catch species, which are then subtracted from the target stock allowances. However, multiple and jointly managed multi-species fisheries frequently appear limited due to reduced fishing opportunities of target stocks, which may prevent the progressive application of IQF. As such, IQF is helpful for certain specific fisheries management, rather than as a tool for broader management approaches jointly applied to different fishing strategies. It is concluded that the application of IQF may undermine the politically-agreed and fixed quota-sharing rule among European member states (i.e. the “relative stability”) and also lacks a reference to FMSY; i.e., it remains to be clarified whether the application of IQF would result in tolerable levels of short term overfishing of by-catch stocks with regard to MSY.