Technical efficiency of Connecticut Long Island Sound lobster fishery : a nonparametric approach to aggregate frontier analysis

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.