Policy Evaluation of the Government Financial Transfers to Korean Fisheries : LISREL Approach

수산부문 정부재정지원정책의 정성 평가

The main objective of this research aims at analyzing efficiency of government financial transfers(GFTs) to the Korean fisheries sector, using the Linear Structural Relations model(i.e., LISERL model) and the field survey data. Most policies of GFTs tend to be implemented to protect industries with weak competitive advantages such as infant and/or primary industries. Specific policy instruments include income transfers, government loans with lower interest rates, taxes and the like. Fishing activities are made at a highly changeable natural environment of the ocean with a great amount of risk and uncertainty. Fishing households make their livelihood under the small-scale fisheries. Such fisheries and fishing households have also a relatively weak market power. Because of these fisheries characteristics most coastal states have adopted a variety of government support programs. However, despite such a huge government support, during the past several decades the world fishing communities have seen a tendency of continuous fishereis resource overexploitation. For this resason there have been hot debates over the government support policies for fisheries through OECD, FAO, WTO, and UNEP. In general, policy evaluations tend to be made on the basis of benefit-cost(B/C) analysis. However, the B/C analysis may produce results quite different from real ones primarily due to many unmeasurable effects. Thus, the authors composed simple questionaires and let fishermen, government officials and academic people answer the questions. The survery was made in several ways such as post-mail and personal/group interviews. In recent years, for analysis of policy performances and effectiveness, the LISREL model has often been used, which consists of structural and measurement eqquations. This model has a good advantage of transforming unobservable variables to observable ones so that it helps construct endogenous cause and effect relationships among relevant variables. The evaluation was done from the two aspects: policy results and policy effectiveness. The policy result evaluation showed that there is a need for improvement for policy problem perception and decision-making process, while the policy effect evaluation suggested that the policy goals were successfully achieved and social justice was improved from the perspective of the entire society as well. However, the research results showed that the GFT policies rendered little contrubtion to narrowing down the gap between GFT beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries incomes.