Department of Economics, UCSD

Artisanal fishing communities include some of the "poorest of the poor". In the past 40 years, strategies that have targeted the harvesting sector of such communities have often failed to address their chronic problems of poverty. Using data from gill net fishers in Malaysia, the paper presents the first technical efficiency study of an artisanal fishery and finds that artisanal fishers are poor but technically efficient. The results from the study and the experiences of other artisanal fisheries are used to advance a development strategy for artisanal fisheries called integrated sustainable fisheries development (ISFD).