The impact of management regulation on the technical efficiency of vesselsin the Dutch beam trawl fishery

The technical efficiency over time of the Dutch beam trawl fleet is examine d using a stochastic production frontier. Factors increasing efficiency are found to be vessel size and improved quota transferability, whereas vessel age, gear restrictions and total allowable catch (implying a higher discar d rate) have a negative impact. Average technical efficiency falls with dec reases in stock abundance relative to the EU fleet size, but improves with fishing area restrictions, possibly through the reduction in crowding arisi ng from a more dispersed fishing activity. The results suggest that EU flee t reduction programmes could result in a less than proportional decrease in harvesting capacity and that fleet replacement programmes associated with the reduction programmes may, to a large extent, offset the capacity reduct ions.