Join us for the next Baker Energy and Environmental Forum, which will take place on 
Thursday, April 16 at 1.00 pm in the Toyota Auditorium in the Baker Center. 

Stephen Newbold, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, will give a 45 minute 
presentation and then lead a discussion with participants. His talk is titled: 

Estimating the Commercial Fishing Benefits of Water Quality Improvements in the 
Chesapeake Bay

Abstract: We estimate the commercial fishing benefits of nutrient load reductions to the 
Chesapeake Bay as part of a larger study designed to estimate the total economic 
benefits of the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) requirements set forth in Executive 
Order 13508.  First, we developed a multi-species model of Chesapeake Bay fisheries to 
forecast the impacts of the TMDL on harvested fish and shellfish stocks in the bay and 
connected Atlantic coast waters. Next, we examined the potential producer and consumer 
surplus changes using a traditional Shafer-logistic model under three alternative 
assumptions about the management regime in each fishery: fixed effort, open access, 
and maximum sustainable surplus. In the special case of an open access fishery, we also 
examined the implications of failure of the exogeneity assumptions often used to estimate 
consumer demand elasticities for fish and shellfish. We show that an unbiased estimate of 
the demand elasticity can be obtained, without recourse to an instrumental variables 
estimator, by exploiting the structural assumptions underlying the nature of the 
simultaneous determination of price and quantity under open access. 

Stephen Newbold is an economist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency National 
Center for Environmental Economics.  He joined the EPA in 2002 after earning a PhD in 
Ecology and MS in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, 
Davis.  With formal training in both ecology and economics, Dr. Newbold works at the 
intersection of ecological and economic modeling to evaluate environmental policy.  He 
has researched and presented throughout the world on a variety of environmental policy 
concerns ranging from climate policy to species conservation to water quality.  Dr. 
Newbold has been the recipient of numerous EPA Bronze medals.  His most recent Bronze 
medal was for work in developing the Ecological Benefits Assessment Strategic Plan 
(EBASP) which serves as a roadmap of strategic EPA actions to identify, quantify, and 
value the ecological benefits of environmental protection policies. 

Paul Armsworth, College of Arts and Sciences
Jacob LaRiviere, Haslam College of Business
Becky Jacobs, College of Law
Don Hodges, College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources
Charles Sims, Baker Center and Haslam College of Business