Characterizing Managerial Skill and Technical Efficiency in a Fishery

Researchers have long recognized that entrepreneurial or managerial skill is a major determinant of productivity or reason why production among firms varies. Yet, except for a few studies, differences in productivity and output levels are usually attributed to plant configuration or scale. More important, there appears to have been few attempts to relate technical efficiency to managerial skill. Utilizing a stochastic production frontier, we examine the relationship between technical efficiency and characteristics of skill such as experience and education in a fishery. Although we can not determine threshold or essential levels of experience and education, substitution possibilities are found to exist between years of experience and education levels. Additional analysis of efficiency for two captains of the same background and experience reveals that additional characteristics need to be considered in the examination of skipper skill or the “good-captain” hypothesis. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1998