Daniel W. Bromley

Anderson-Bascom Professor of Applied Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Purging the Frontier from Our Mind: Rescuing Fisheries Policy from Incoherence

2004 Schedule

Abstract

American fishery policy is imprisoned by mental models that defeat coherence about how to design more promising management futures. The idea of the frontier is at the core of current policy incoherence. Images—and specious accounts—of (1) “unowned” fish, (2) IFQs as “property rights,” (3) private ownership as necessary and sufficient for individuals (called “owners”) to suddenly be nice to nature, and (4) “rights-based” fisheries combine to block necessary and innovative thought about how to extricate ourselves from the current mess. Until we purge the frontier—with its associated images—from our mind it will be difficult to undertake ecosystem management. More seriously, it will be impossible to rectify existing governance and management arrangements that are responsible for the sorry state of America’s fisheries.

Bio

Daniel W. Bromley is Anderson–Bascom Professor of applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Professor Bromley has published extensively on (1) the institutional foundations of the economy, (2) legal and philosophical dimensions of property rights, (3) economics of natural resources and the environment, and (4) economic development. He has been editor of the journal Land Economics since 1974. He is a Fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association, and is listed in Who’s Who in Economics. He is currently serving as Chair of the US Federal Advisory Committee on Marine Protected Areas.

He has been a consultant to the Global Environment Facility, the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, the US Agency for International Development, the Asian Development Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Ministry for the Environment in New Zealand. He has worked and lectured in Russia, Finland, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, England, the Netherlands, Denmark, South Africa, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, New Zealand, Thailand, Haiti, India, and Sudan.

Professor Bromley has written and edited eleven books; citations for the most recent follow:

Economic Interests and Institutions: Conceptual Foundations of Public Policy (Blackwell, 1989).
Environment and Economy: Property Rights and Public Policy (Blackwell, 1991).
The Social Response to Environmental Risk (Kluwer, 1992). (with Kathleen Segerson)
Making the Commons Work: Theory, Practice, and Policy (ICS Press, 1992).
The Handbook of Environmental Economics (Blackwell, 1995).
Sustaining Development: Environmental Resources in Developing Countries (Elgar, 1999).
Economics, Ethics, and Environmental Policy (Blackwell, 2002). (with Jouni Päävola)
Who Owns America's Fisheries? (Island Press, 2002). (with Seth Macinko)

His latest book, Sufficient Reason: Volitional Pragmatism and the Meaning of Economic Institutions, is currently under review at Princeton University Press.

Video

Streaming Video: Each clip is in QuickTime format and runs approximately 9.5 minutes. The Quick Time Previewer is free and can be downloaded from http://www.apple.com/quicktime/. If using a PC: Right click mouse > Select 'save target as' > open once downloaded.
Clip 1
Clip 2
Clip 3
Clip 4
Clip 5