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Saving the Whales: Lessons from the Extinction of the Eastern Arctic Bowhead

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2004

ROBERT C. ALLEN  and
IAN KEAY
ROBERT C. ALLEN
Affiliation:
Professor, Nuffield College, Oxford University, Oxford, United Kingdom, OX1 1NF. E-mail: [email protected]
IAN KEAY
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Department of Economics and School of Environmental Studies, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, K7L 3N6. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

In this article we investigate the possibility that a regulatory regime designed to maximize the profitability of the early Dutch whaling industry could have simultaneously guaranteed the biological sustainability of the eastern Arctic Bowhead whale. We find that policies with economic profit as the sole objective could have saved the whales, as well as increasing the incomes of the whalers, under assumptions commonly made in fisheries models. However, the necessary assumptions are implausible. Under more historically relevant assumptions we find that regulation could not have simultaneously increased profits and preserved the stock of whales.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 64 , Issue 2 , June 2004 , pp. 400 - 432
Copyright
© 2004 The Economic History Association

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