Regulating Biological Resources: Lessons From Marine Fisheries in the United States

We are grateful for helpful comments from Maximilian Auffhammer, Chris Costello, Michael Greenstone, Koichiro Ito, Amir Jina, Kailin Kroetz, Ryan Kellogg, Chris Legault, Kyle Meng, Jennifer Raynor, James Rising, Jeffrey Shrader, and Cody Szuwalski. We would like to thank Jesse Adelman, Sushant Banjara, Jennifer Boughton, David Foote, Miriam Gold, Alessandra Guerrero, Ben Hurley, Stephanie Klunk, Chong An Ong, Pete Rodrigue, Ruby Roty, Daniel Tropper, and Vanessa Zemke, for excellent research assistance. We would also like to thank seminar and conference participants at University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign, UC Davis, NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center Monster Jam, The World Bank, Resources for the Future, Midwest Energy Fest, the Ostrom Workshop, the AERE Sessions at the AEA, the International Institute of Fisheries Economics & Trade , the NBER EEE SI, and the AEA Economics and Marine Resource Management Session for their helpful comments. We also thank the staff members at the different Fishery Management Councils and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, especially Karen Greene, for their assistance in accessing, validating, and interpreting the data. We acknowledge financial support from the Energy Policy Institute, and the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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• September 11, 2025