This due to the fact that the introduction of an MPA may increase the equilibrium effort level in the fishery as compared to the purely open access case. MPAs have been much addressed in the fisheries literature and they have, generally, been embraced by biologists as a potent tool in fisheries management

and conservation (see e.g. [7] and [8]), while receiving a fair amount of skepticism from economists (see e.g. [9], [10] and [11]). Biologists have claimed that economists fail to take the complexity of the ecosystems into account in their analysis, thereby underestimating the potential benefits from creating MPAs, while economists accuse biologists of applying too simplistic models of human behavior (see e.g. [12] and [13]) and as a result overestimating Dabrafenib solubility dmso the benefits. Some of the skepticism expressed towards MPAs

may have been based on the choice of growth model and management objective. Flaaten AG-014699 purchase and Mjølhus [14] and [15] showed that the type of model used by e.g. Hannesson [9] and Sanchirico and Wilen [16] implies that post-MPA growth will be lower than pre-MPA growth, independent of any harvest. With this property built into the models used to evaluate the effect of an MPA, it should come as no surprise that a reserve is found to be costly in terms of fisheries. Though some studies have paid attention to harvest and conservation goals [10], most economic analysis of MPAs has focused on simple single-stock models without taking into account broader ecosystem or conservation values (see [17], [18], [19] and [20] for some exceptions). It should be admitted Oxalosuccinic acid that conservation may be a goal in itself, meriting the study of target stock levels, as well as habitat restoration. Within fisheries economics, analyzing

management strategies to maximize resource rent is a central issue, but consumer and producer surplus (CS and PS respectively), the importance of which was illustrated in Copes׳ [21] seminal article, are also central elements of total economic surplus. Conditions under which an MPA can contribute to a change in PS and CS are suggested in Pezzey et al. [22] and mentioned in Sanchirico and Wilen [10], but are not included in their modeling. Hence, although economists often compare private property regimes or pure open access to MPAs in combination with open access [9], [16] and [23], hardly any effort has been made to analyze when CS and PS will be generated and to what extent. This paper revisits the issue of the economics of marine protected areas using a model that does not assume lower biological growth through the introduction of a reserve, and extends the literature by focusing on other welfare economic benefits than solely resource rent. The article is structured as follows: in Section 2 the model used for the analysis is presented.