Frank Asche

University of Florida | UF · School of Forest Resources and Conservation

In recent years, eco-certification has become an important market feature for aquaculture products, with several labels available for producers who want to signal sustainable or responsible production practices. In this study, the literature on the economic effects of eco-certification of aquaculture is reviewed to summarize the current state of kn...

Global aquaculture production has been rapidly increasing in recent decades. Associated with this growth, there has been a discussion concerning the industry's socioeconomic impact. In particular, the industry's ability to make a positive difference in the communities where it is conducted is often questioned. This is a complex topic to address due...

Agglomeration externality is a feature that has received limited attention in food production supply chains. Using highly disaggregated trade data, this paper investigates the presence of regional agglomeration effects in Norwegian seafood exports. Results indicate strong agglomeration effects in the exports of both farmed and harvested seafood at...

This paper investigates the effect of the Brexit referendum on Norwegian firms' exports of fresh seafood to the United Kingdom. We exploit the referendum as a quasi‐natural experiment to investigate the effect of an uncertainty shock in trade on export values, volumes, and prices, as well as market entry and exit. First, we find that Norwegian firm...

Imports can contribute to economic activity and have positive backward and forward linkages in national and regional economies, particularly in the presence of limited domestic supply. Seafood in the United States (U.S.) is a remarkable example of import dependence since most consumption by both processing industries and households relies on import...

In this article, we analyze the relationship between class sizes and examination results in higher education. Data from the University of Stavanger, collected in the Common Student System (FS) in the period from 2011 to 2021, shows that there is a negative correlation between the number of students enrolled on courses and examination results. An in...

The loss of MSC certification for parts of the cod and haddock fisheries and the entire NVG herring fishery provided a unique opportunity to study the significance of sustainability certification for the Norwegian fishing industry. The results show that certification is important for cod in certain market regions where we find a significant price p...

Economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources to meet human wants and needs and has a critical role to play in addressing challenges related to environmental sustainability, community resilience, and food security. In the context of aquaculture, the key to such a discussion is understanding the linkages of aquaculture farming busines...

Aquaculture is a rapidly growing food production technology, but there are significant concerns related to its environmental impact and adverse social effects. We examine aquaculture outcomes in a three pillars of sustainability framework by analyzing data collected using the Aquaculture Performance Indicators. Using this approach, comparable data...

This study investigates the role of starting prices in sequentially ascending (English) auctions. Applying binary logit and hedonic price models on a unique data set comprising 8217 auctioned lots of frozen saithe, an important species in Norwegian fisheries, we find support for three hypotheses; that low starting prices will lead to a higher share...

Many rights‐based systems in fisheries use individual fishing quotas (IFQs) that allocate shares of total allowable catch to individual fishers, vessels, or groups of fishers. We analyze the performance of IFQs in the Norwegian coastal groundfish fisheries that substantially limit transferability. We use data from two similar fishing groups that we...

This article investigates cross‐market reallocation of trade to mitigate negative effects of large economic shocks. We propose a simple measure of trade reallocation and apply it to Norwegian exports during the great trade collapse following the financial crisis in 2008–2009. The results indicate statistically significant cross‐market reallocation...

In this article, we analyze the relationship between class sizes and examination results in higher education. Data from the University of Stavanger, collected in the Common Student System (FS) in the period from 2011 to 2021 shows that there is a clear correlation between the number of students enrolled on courses and examination results. An increa...

Introduction: The food-energy-water (FEW) nexus highlights the interdependencies between the systems that people rely on for these essential resources. For example, globally, over two thirds of freshwater withdrawals are used to produce food, and another 10% is used during energy generation. In addition, the food system uses one eighth of global ne...

Food loss and waste (FLW) is a major challenge to food system sustainability, including aquatic foods. We investigated aquatic FLW in the food supply of the United States, the largest importer of aquatic food globally, using primary and secondary data and life cycle methodology. We show that there are significant differences in FLW among species, p...

While seafood is a highly traded commodity, lack of data has largely prevented examination of the firms and industries that are conducting the actual transactions. In this paper we use highly disaggregated data to provide an overview of the seafood exports from Norway, the world's 2nd largest seafood exporting country, and a country where fisheries...

The oyster aquaculture industry has grown quickly in recent years. New farming techniques target specific attributes that increase oysters' value and allow them to be sold in the high-value, half-shell market. A lack of economic data makes it difficult for growers to determine which specific attributes increase oyster value, however. This publicati...

There is strong evidence that ecolabeled seafood commands a price premium in the retail market in Northern European countries. At the same time, there is significant uncertainty as to whether these markups are passed on to the fishers. This is important because producer benefits are required for an ecolabel to provide incentives for sustainable fis...

Blue foods are highly diverse and are supported by a wide range of ecosystems, production practices, and markets. This diversity influences resiliency of aquatic food systems, their capacity to contribute to global food security, and the spread of knowledge and adoption of innovations. Here, trends in diversity and determinants of diversity in capt...

The price of most food products is a function of attributes related to the product itself and signals associated with product features. Using a novel data source, online restaurant menus, this study examines the impact of various attributes on raw, half shell oyster prices in the United States. We find that oyster value is significantly affected by...

Capture-based aquaculture (CBA) is an important branch of the aquaculture industry that differs from closed cycle farming in that the stocking material consists of captured wild fish or other aquatic organisms. By skipping the difficult early production stages of fish farming, producers can test whether assumed market advantages such as high qualit...

Florida has many ecosystems that are thought of as especially important such as springs, coasts, dry prairies, and the Everglades. One of the ways importance is measured is through value. The term ecosystem services describes the benefits ecosystems and their components provide humans. This publication describes some of the ways to measure ecosyste...

Research on trade relationships have documented a high rate of relationship breakup and churning. We use data on Norwegian exports to document two stylized facts about the stability of trade relationships. First, the probability of relationship breakup increases in the deviation of the relationship‐specific price from a reference price. Second, rel...

Marine ecosystem-based management often aims to satisfy a wide range of economic, social and environmental objectives. These are often measured in non-commensurable units, making identification of a preferred option difficult when outcomes and measures vary considerably. In this paper, we examine the potential for data envelopment analysis (DEA) as...

Managing recreational fisheries requires balancing sustainability against allowing as much access and harvest as possible. Maintaining sustainability is made harder by discard mortality where any fishing activity, even catch and release, risks fish dying from injuries, predation, or other causes. This is especially a problem for Florida reef fish s...

Seafood is the food group with the highest share traded, and the U.S. is the world’s largest seafood importer, importing 79% of the seafood consumed. Hence, a study examining the impacts of the measures to contain COVID-19 on U.S. seafood imports will not only show how U.S. seafood availability has been affected, but will also give strong indicatio...

Global aquaculture production has grown very rapidly in recent decades. This is largely due to a number of innovations that has increased the control with the production process and competitiveness. These innovations come in a number of forms from radical new concepts to knowledge adaption from the terrestrial food production system. While there ex...

Food loss and waste (FLW) is a major challenge to food system sustainability, including aquatic foods. Few data exist on aquatic FLW outside of small-scale fisheries, with major gaps in aquaculture species that make up half of global production. We investigated aquatic FLW in the food supply of the United States (US), the largest importer of aquati...

While information technology has led to increased market integration, in many markets there are still significant heterogeneity associated with factors such as product characteristics, market location, market lots, transaction mode and buyer and seller characteristics. Using a data set of 40 million observations of up-streams fish sales in Atlantic...

The stone crab (Menippe mercenaria and Menippe adina) fishery is the second most valuable commercial fishery in the state of Florida, with $30 million in dockside annual landings in 2019, It is a unique fishery in that only the claws are harvested, and the crab is returned to the sea where a high portion of them survive. There is substantial variab...

There have been a number of indications of strong negative impacts of Covid-19 and the preventive measures associated with the pandemic for all food sectors. However, there is increasing evidence that the picture is quite nuanced where the Covid related measures are creating challenges for some and opportunities for others. In this paper we investi...

A rapidly growing literature shows that COVID-19 and the measures to contain the spread of the virus can have significant market impacts for seafood. These can be interruptions of production, or reductions in demand directly or indirectly due to supply chain challenges. In this paper we investigate the potential impacts of COVID-19 on seafood expor...

Seasonality is a natural feature of wild caught fisheries that introduces variation in food supply, and which often is amplified by fisheries management systems. Seasonal timing of landings patterns and linkages to consumption patterns can have a potentially strong impact on income for coastal communities as well as import patterns. This study char...

Fisheries and aquaculture are highly reliant on fossil fuels and must transition to renewable energy to reduce carbon emissions and meet global planetary heath goals. Here we assessed total and renewable energy use in farmed catfish and wild-caught salmon, two of the largest seafood sectors in the United States (U.S.). Interviews were used to explo...

A rapidly growing literature investigates how the recent Covid-19 pandemic has affected international seafood trade along multiple dimensions, creating opportunities as well as challenges. This suggests that many of the impacts of the Covid measures are subtle and require disaggregated data to allow the impacts in different supply chains to be teas...

Understanding the relative contributions of the environment to commercial fisheries and aquaculture systems is an area of intense importance as it quantifies the dependence these human dominated systems have on healthy and productive ecosystems. Measures of sustainability are required that include environmental support, use of nonrenewable resource...

Small-scale fisheries have received most of the attention in the literature investigating negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on seafood production. Larger fishing vessels are often perceived to be more resilient as they are better able to alter harvest patterns in response to supply shocks than smaller, less mobile vessels. In addition, larg...

We find that Chinese consumers responded strongly to government restrictions during the COVID-19 crisis. Our event-study framework shows that emergency declarations raised average food prices by as much as 7.8 standard deviations of the price change distribution, with a much larger effect on non-perishable vegetable prices (e.g., 17.0 standard devi...

Background: The 2020 US Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that the US population consume more seafood. Most analyses of seafood consumption ignore heterogeneity in consumption patterns by species, nutritional content, production methods, and price, which have implications for applying recommendations. Objectives: We assessed seafood int...

While highly successful in terms of profitable seafood production, salmon (Salmo salar) aquaculture may also be a source of potential negative environmental externalities. In an attempt to address these challenges through supporting the development of new technology, the Norwegian government has introduced a new class of aquaculture licenses labele...

The commons literature focuses heavily on rules and behavior of resource users but places less emphasis on the returns to individual effort. However, for most resource settings, market conditions and associated resource prices are key drivers of exploitation effort. In a globalized world, import competition can strongly influence the incentives for...

The US is the world’s largest seafood importer by value, with an increasing share of imports composed of farmed seafood. Despite numerous policy initiatives, production and growth in the US aquaculture sector is limited, and there is a significant literature discussing potential explanations. In this paper the recent success of imported Branzino is...

Aquaculture's rapidly increasing contribution to global aquatic food supply is masked by rhetoric on sustainability and international trade. We examine the association of country-level aquaculture production and per capita consumption of aquatic food in 163 countries. We find a positive association between aquaculture production and aquatic food co...

There is growing recognition that fisheries should be managed for all three pillars of sustainability: economic, social and environmental sustainability. Limited quantitative evidence exists on factors supporting social sustainability, much less factors that contribute to multiple dimensions of sustainability. To develop a broader understanding of...

Public regulation of a successful industry such as aquaculture needs to consider different concerns such as industry growth and development, but also environmental and societal sustainability. Governance systems are continuously challenged to respond in adequate manners to how aquaculture industry develops. This is especially noticeable when it com...

An estimated 74.9% of China’s seafood imports are reexported

Compared to finfish and crustaceans, limited attention has been given to the economic modeling and production risk analysis of mollusk aquaculture. Given mollusk aquaculture's sensitivity to environmental factors, understanding production risk and its relationship to production technology and location is critical to firm viability. We modeled produ...

Fossils fuel use is the main source of climate emissions in many fisheries and also one of the input factors with the highest cost share. This has led Norway to eliminate an implicit subsidy in the form of the fuel tax-exemption for the fishing fleet. It is suggested to gradually reduce the fuel tax-exemption over the years 2022–25 and simultaneous...

Access to highly disaggregated trade data allows for a more nuanced investigation of different margins of trade, and the factors known to influence them. In this paper, the number of importers and shipments to each importer is investigated together with the more traditional margins. Potential explanatory factors of these trade margins are combined...

In recent years, several studies have identified price premiums for wild seafood certified as sustainably produced. Even though more than half of seafood for human consumption originates from aquaculture, not much attention has been given to consumer preferences for sustainability certified farmed fish, and to the implied price premiums for such pr...

Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing is a significant challenge to sustainable seafood production which is difficult to address in traditional governance systems. Recently, the U.S. has implemented a Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP) to combat IUU fishing and seafood fraud by requiring chain-of-custody documentation of 13 speci...

Market‐based fisheries management systems give incentives to reduce the fleet size and employment, which increases earnings and contributes to resolve the tragedy of the commons. However, the often‐stated expectation that economies of scale cause the disappearance of small‐scale fishery is not observed in many cases. In this study, we investigate t...

Ecolabels are supposed to reduce the information asymmetry between producers and consumers, but they may also produce a warm glow of “green” behavior. We design discrete choice experiments to measure the relative importance of these motivations for choosing ecolabeled seafood products. We find that choice probability increases if the product carrie...

While a large number of studies have investigated seafood consumption in various markets, surprisingly little is known about the types of seafood sold in retail outlets or their product forms. in the USA. This is particularly true for fresh seafood, which is generally regarded as the most valuable product form of seafood. In this article, a unique...

The combination of advances in knowledge, technology, changes in consumer preference and low cost of manufacturing is accelerating the next technology revolution in crop, livestock and fish production systems. This will have major implications for how, where and by whom food will be produced in the future. This next technology revolution could bene...

In recent years, several studies have identified price premiums for wild seafood certified as sustainably produced. Even though more than half of seafood for human consumption originates from aquaculture, not much attention has been given to consumer preferences for sustainability certified farmed fish, and to the implied price premiums for such pr...

In recent years trade with highly perishable agricultural products like fresh fish, berries, and cut flowers has increased substantially. The perishability of these products appears to challenge conventional wisdom when it comes to food trade, which emphasizes the importance of large shipments to reduce transportation costs. In this paper, gravity...

Many price indices are constructed using bilateral transaction prices. This paper shows how the time series behavior of cross‐sectional price moments can reveal useful information about pricing behavior in bilateral transactions markets. Inference is formalized in a microlevel price determination model that allows for rigid pricing at the level of...

Aquaculture governance can be challenging as a number of stakeholders have different objectives and visions for the industry. A license is an important tool in ensuring an orderly development of an industry, providing rights as well as obligations. However, the constraints imposed by a license can also prevent desirable activities. In the Norwegian...

Background Seafood has a nutritional profile that can be beneficial to human health, which gives it a role to play in healthy diets. In addition, because its production and harvesting can have fewer environmental impacts than some forms of animal protein, it can contribute to sustainable diets. However, the positive health and environmental outcome...

Seafood is a highly traded commodity and 71% of the United States (U.S.) supply is imported. This study addresses questions about imported seafood safety and compares risks of outbreaks and recalls across countries of origin, species, and stages of the supply chain. We found that where seafood comes from does not play a major role in risk. Risk is...

Using a unique dataset, this paper investigates factors influencing production loss in Norwegian salmonid farming. The factors can be grouped into fish-specific factors (e.g. species, genetics, and generation), input factors (e.g. vaccines and smolt quality), environmental factors (e.g. geographical location), and managerial factors (e.g. ownership...