Technological and Economic Interrelationships in Hawaii's Troll and Handline Fisheries

This paper examines technological and economic interrelationships in Hawaii's troll and handline fisheries. A multiproduct dual revenue function was specified separately for the two fisheries to estimate own‐price, cross‐price, and effort elasticities of supply for selected species or groups of species. Various aspects of multiproduct cost structure were also analyzed with the information contained in the revenue function model. The null hypothesis of nonjointness in inputs was rejected for the troll fishery but not for the handline fishery. Thus, single‐species management may be inappropriate for the former but appropriate for the latter. The acceptance of the input‐output separability hypothesis in both fisheries suggests that management of the whole multispecies fishery, rather than regulation of a few key species, may be warranted. Own‐price and cross‐price elasticity estimates for the troll fishery suggest that the fishers' output supply decisions depend on prices and that pairs of individual species are either substitutes or complements in production. However, in the handline fishery, neither the individual species' own prices nor the prices of other species were found to affect the output supply decisions. Output supplies under both fisheries were positively affected by the effort level. Both fisheries were characterized by cost anticomplementarities, decreasing multiproduct economies of scale, and inelastic cost elasticities.