The British Columbia halibut fishery provides a natural experiment of the e
ffects of "privatizing the commons." Using firm-level data from the fishery
2 years before private harvesting rights were introduced, the year they we
re implemented, and 3 years afterward, a stochastic frontier is estimated t
o test for changes in technical, allocative, and economic efficiency. The s
tudy indicates that (1) the short-run efficiency gains from privatization m
ay take several years to materialize and can be compromised by restrictions
on transferability, duration, and divisibility of the property right; (2)
substantial long-run gains in efficiency can be jeopardized by preexisting
regulations and the bundling of the property right to the capital stock; an
d (3) the gains from privatization are not just in terms of cost efficiency
but include important benefits in revenue and product form.