Research

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Dubois, A., Mahieu, P. A., Bates, A., Meredith, J., Schoefs, F., (2026). Preference and Willingness to-pay analysis for an eco-engineering technology for floating wind turbines. Wind Energy Science, accepted for publication April, 2026

Meredith, J., (2023). Drivers of Access Right Sales: The Role of Resource Volatility and Individual Shocks in the Alaska Salmon Fishery. Marine Resource Economics, 38(4), 413–434.

Reyes, D. C., Meredith, J., Puro, L., Berry, K., Kersbergen, R., Soder, K. J., Quigley, C., Donihue, M., Cox, D., Price, N. N., (2023). Maine organic dairy producers’ receptiveness to seaweed supplementation and effect of Chondrus crispus on enteric methane emissions in lactating cows. Frontiers in Veterinary Science , 10.

Anderson, C.M., Meredith, J., Felthoven, R., Fey, M., (2018). The Distribution of Fishing Revenues Among North Pacific Regions and Communities. Marine Fisheries Review 80(2), 1-16.

Anderson, J.L., Anderson, C.M., Chu, J., Meredith, J., Asche, F., Sylvia, G., et al. (2015) The Fishery Performance Indicators: A Management Tool for Triple Bottom Line Outcomes. PLoS ONE 10(5): e0122809. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0122809

Meredith, J., Robinson, J., Walker, S., Wydick, B., (2013). Keeping the doctor away: Experimental evidence on investment in preventative health products. Journal of Development Economics 105: 196-210.

Working Papers

Meredith, J. “Fish or Flight: The Impact of Transferable Access Rights on Rural Alaskan Salmon Harvesters”

This paper explores how salmon harvesters in rural Alaska responded to the implementation of a limited access management regime that introduced transferable permits in 1975. In the context of a predominantly subsistence economy, the lump-sum payments from salmon permit sales were significant wealth shocks. Using household survey data collected in nine remote Alaskan villages, I estimate the impact of permit sale on the initial permitholders and their descendants. The eligibility rules used to allocate permits allow me to identify the impact of transferability by comparing the original permitholders to their younger siblings and to applicants given non-transferable permits. Sale of the permit by original permitholders makes their descendants more likely to migrate out of the original village and less likely to participate in commercial or subsistence harvest. Predominantly allocated to men, the higher value drift net permits were leveraged into an immediate increase in the probability of outmigration, an increase in durable assets, but no long run improvements in descendant outcomes. Contrary to the intentions of the permitsystem, set net permit sales by women diminish the assets of the original permitholder, but make their descendants more likely to be formally employed outside the village. The results suggest that a transition to rights-based management of natural resources will have unintended distributional consequences that undermine the sustainability of rural fishing operations. The magnitude of these effects depends on liquidity, gender norms, and labor market frictions.

KDLG Dillingham

Alaska Fish Radio

Meredith, J. “Keeping it in the Family: Gender and Inheritance Norms in the Alaska Salmon Fishery”

In the Bristol Bay salmon fishery, harvesting technology and the corresponding access rights are gendered. Women are more likely to participate in the less capital-intensive set gillnet sector while drift gillnet permits with higher market value are predominantly fished by men. Both types of transferable permit are a large proportion of household assets in rural fishing-dependent communities, and thus their sale and inheritance may drive intrahousehold bargaining. Households where both spouses received permits in the initial allocation engage in joint decision-making about their sale. Regardless of the gender of the initial permit holder, households engage in rational profit-maximizing behaviour and are more likely to sell the permit that has brought in less revenue per family member. Since the drift gillnet fishery is over-capitalized, this has led to a disproportionate sale of male access rights by rural families and an increase in sons taking over their mothers’ harvesting operations. After five decades of permit transferability, the cumulative effect has been a systematic transfer of permits from women's hands into male descendants' control, consolidating fishing access along gender divides. Relative to households where only the father received a permit, descendants of families with a maternal permit are more likely to still be engaged in local harvesting operations. Lastly, exploiting random variation in the gender of children born under different permit allocations, sibling gender composition shapes long-run outcomes: daughters with brothers have a much lower probability of inheriting drift permits, yet parents compensate by investing 1.96 additional years in daughters' education, creating divergent intergenerational pathways toward wage employment for women and fishing specialization for men. Quantifying the distributional consequences of rights-based fisheries management requires understanding these nested household decisions that encode gender norms into intergenerational outcomes.

Works in Progress

"Income Diversification Potential of Seaweed Aquaculture in Coastal Maine"

“Social License to Farm Seaweed: Housing Market Shifts, Warming Waters, and the Working Waterfront in Coastal Maine”

“Working Waterfronts and Community Resilience in Coastal Maine" (with Michael Donihue: Based on Maine Community Resilience Index)

"Solar Adoption, Energy Equity, and Grid Politics in Lahore" (with Alize Warraich ’28)

Competitive Grant Funding

2021-2026 Sustainable Agricultural Systems, USDA, Coast to Cow to Consumer, $280,701, Total Grant Amount: $10 million

2014-2016 NMFS/Sea Grant Marine Resource Economics Fellowship, NOAA, Fish or Flight: Modeling the migration decisions of rural Alaskan harvesters, $77,000

2014-2016 NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center, Analysis of trends in regional distribution of revenue from Alaskan fisheries, $25,000

Technical Reports

Meredith, J. (2017). Guinea Bissau: Evaluation of the Environmental, Economic and Social Performance of Artisanal Fisheries using the Fisheries Performance Indicators. World Bank Policy Paper. 47pp.

Anderson, J. L., C. Anderson, J. Chu and J. Meredith. (2016). Fishery Performance Indicators Manual (Version 1.3). Institute for Sustainable Food Systems. 197 pp.

Chu, J. and J. Meredith. (2015). Economic, Environmental, and Social Evaluation of Africa’s Small-Scale Fisheries. World Bank Group Environmental and Natural Resources Global Practice Policy Note Report Number 95557-GLB. 54pp.

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