Ecotrust offers its warm congratulations to collaborator and friend Alvin Roth, Stanford Professor of Economics and co-recipient (with Lloyd Shapely) of this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics. Roth is honored for his contributions to the field of market design and his innovative use of economic theory and tools to solve real world problems.
In 2007, Roth hosted a two-day Ecotrust workshop at Harvard on market design for fisheries quota programs and other market-based incentives for fisheries management. The workshop and accompanying working paper contributed to a greater understanding of the unique features of markets in the fisheries sector; how market design principles can help alleviate market deficiencies in the fisheries sector; and how market mechanisms in fisheries could operate and how benefits would accrue to participants.
That workshop forged the basis for recommendations for improving fisheries management across the US. Roth went on to advise the Cape Cod Fisheries Trust on solving design problems related to the Cape Cod scallop and ground fish fisheries, while Ecotrust convened a blue-ribbon panel of experts (including the late Elinor Ostrom, the 2009 Nobel Prize winner in economics) to advance the development and implementation of catch share programs to better benefit fishing communities.