Abstract:
In this paper, we address the question whether the technical efficiency of a fishing industry is
affected by the determinants of ambient water quality of the aquatic ecosystem. Using zone specific
data from 1998 – 2007 for the Connecticut Long Island Sound lobster fishery and an approach
combining a bootstrapping technique with data envelopment analysis, we obtained the DEA
estimates of technical efficiency for each fishing zone. We then used the bootstrapped-DEA results
and Censored Quantile Regression to assess the impact of the environmental variables on different
efficiency percentiles. A key result indicates when environmental conditionals are favorable (high
dissolved oxygen levels) efficiency is low and when environmental conditionals are less favorable
(high levels of nitrogen), efficiency is high. The results show that the intensity of significant
impacts given the contextual variables may vary among high and low efficiency periods.
