Fishing rights, redistribution and policy : the South African commercial T.A.C. fisheries
- Authors: Mather, Diarmid John
- Date: 2005
- Subjects: Fisheries -- South Africa Fish trade -- South Africa Fishery law and legislation -- South Africa Fishery policy -- South Africa Fishery management -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1061 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007531
- Description: The main objective of this thesis is to provide an analysis of the economic logic behind fisheries policy and redistribution in South African. An examination of the institutional and organizational evolution reveals that South African fisheries policy followed the world trend in the movement toward quota management systems. However, it is argued that due to the peculiarities of the Apartheid political system, South Africa developed a unique and persistent structure of individual fishing rights that resulted in a transfer of power from the fisher to monopsonistic, and subsequently vertically integrated, fish processing companies. Problems, however, arose with the need to redistribute fishing rights to previously repressed racial groups. It is proposed that, within a specific form (TAC), the structure of individual fishing rights can be decomposed into four operational rules, namely, the right of participation, asset size, tradability and duration of term. Policy design is restricted to a feasible set of rules that impact on the flexibility of the system, the incentives facing private fishing companies and fishers, the efficiency of the fisheries management plan and finally the effect it has on a redistribution strategy. Within this analytical framework, South Africa's policy yields a very flexible system favourable to monopsonistic industrial organisation. However, by adding a redistribution constraint, this structure has a number of important effects. First, as new quota holders are added the information costs for effective fisheries management increase exponentially. Second, the transaction costs to private fishing companies are increased. Third, only the resource rent is redistributed (weak redistribution). Next, the micro to small vessel fisheries, the medium vessel fisheries and the large vessel fisheries are examined separately. The major aim is to determine, within the available data, the effect that a weak redistribution policy (redistribution of the resource rent), has on strong redistribution (redistribution of fishing capital and skills). The evidence definitely supports the analytical framework and suggests that fundamentally the structure of individual fishing rights, which evolved in response to a monopsonistic industrial organisation during the apartheid era in South Africa, works against strong redistribution. Also, that different fisheries face different constraints and that these should in certain instances be treated separately.
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- Date Issued: 2005
An approach to analyzing gold supply from the South African gold mines
- Authors: Mather, Diarmid John
- Date: 1995
- Subjects: Gold mines and mining -- Economic aspects -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSc
- Identifier: vital:1015 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002750 , Gold mines and mining -- Economic aspects -- South Africa
- Description: The gold mining fIrm in South Africa is viewed as a normal fIrm producing gold bearing ore but faced with a quality constraint (grade). Grade, however, is never uniformly distributed in a metalliferous deposit and because high grades are mined fIrst, the quality constraint becomes increasingly severe with cumulated production. The fIrm will continue to mine gold bearing ore until it reaches its mining limit where the marginal cost of recovering the gold is equal to the marginal revenue received from that gold and at that point the economic deposit becomes exhausted. Because the mining limit is determined by cost/technology and price, it is not fIxed and thus the point of economic exhaustion may change. When high grades are mined fIrst the relationship between the tonnage of gold ore and the grade describes the rate at which the grade is expected to fall with cumulated production. In this thesis, the grade for South African Witwatersrand gold producers is modelled to fall exponentially. The mining limit, determined by costs/technology and price, can be expressed in terms of grade. By predicting the decay in grade relative to the tonnage of gold ore and applying a mining limit, a life-time size of the economic deposit can be estimated. The remaining life of a producing gold mine can then be determined and the flow of gold predicted. An empirical treatment using the disk model of a gold deposit is undertaken for a gold mine, a goldfIeld and the total Witwatersrand gold deposit. A dynamic econometric analysis of expected mining costs and gold prices is not attempted; however certain examples are used to illustrate the applicability of the model and the influence of the South African gold mining tax formula on the life of the mine.
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- Date Issued: 1995