This talk examines how fuel subsidy reforms reshape fishing behavior and compliance. Using China’s 2016 subsidy reform as a natural experiment, it shows that while reducing subsidies lowers overall fishing effort, it can also generate unintended increases in unauthorized fishing, particularly among larger vessels and in disputed maritime areas.
About Dr. Montero Mestre
Jorge Montero is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Economics at Universidad de los Andes and a Research Associate with the SDG Nexus Network at Justus Liebig University Giessen. His research lies at the intersection of environmental and resource economics, political economy, and applied econometrics. His broader research agenda focuses on the economics of sustainable development, particularly on how institutions, conservation incentives, and environmental policies shape the management of common-pool resources. He is interested in topics including environmental governance, ecosystem services, water resource management, climate adaptation, and the role of protected areas in biodiversity conservation. Methodologically, he combines applied econometrics, causal inference, spatial analysis, machine learning, and geospatial data science to address policy-relevant questions. By leveraging spatially explicit datasets and remote sensing technologies, his research seeks to understand how land-use change and governance interventions affect both environmental outcomes and human well-being across connected landscapes.