Sebastián Vergara

This paper examines estimations of technical catch efficiency for a sample of 204 industrial vessels operating at the pelagic grounds of Southern-Central Chile during the 1985-95 period. We consider a Translog stochastic frontier model à-la Battese-Coelli (1995), which includes a vessel-specific inefficiency model. The vessel's age and scale of operation are found to be significant in explaining catch efficiency. Larger vessels tend to be the most efficient and those showing least variance in their efficiencies. Whereas smaller vessels, which on average are the oldest in the fleet, show greater dispersion and lower levels in their efficiencies. Explanatory variables aggregated at the ship-owner level, which aim at controlling for firm's operating scale, are also significant as a whole when explaining vessel-level efficiency. We find positive search externalities associated to the number of vessels under control of a given firm, as well as external diseconomies related to the use intensity given by each firm to its fleet. Yearly averages for vessel's catch efficiencies vary from 50% up to 86%. Whereas close to 90% of the residuals' total variance is associated with the inefficiency term, which suggests a significant disparity in vessels' catch performance at this fishery