Sale price flexibilities of Mediterranean hake and red shrimp
Francesc Maynou
Abstract
The formation of ex-vessel price of two important Mediterranean fisheries products (hake and red shrimp) was studied through an inverse demand approach, using data from the Catalonia bottom trawl fishery (NW Mediterranean). In both species, the landings by commercial category (proxy for fish size) and total landings determined the daily price fetched at the auction, as summarized by the quantity and scale coefficients (“flexibilities”) derived from the inverse demand model. In general, quantity flexibilities were between −0.1 and − 0.6, indicating that a 1% increase in the landings of one category (for a given species) would reduce the average daily ex-vessel price by 0.1–0.6%. Scale flexibilities were generally lower than − 1, showing that these species tend to behave non-homothetically, especially for the large size categories. These results imply that changes to the quantities landed and the size composition of landings, resulting for instance from fisheries management measures, will affect sale prices. Simulations of sale price for scenarios of reduced landings, in line with fishing at maximum sustainable levels, showed that losses in revenue would be much less than the losses projected with constant prices. Similarly, higher landings resulting from rebuilt stocks would yield lower revenues from these stocks because of the generally negative flexibilities.