EFFICIENCY AND SIZE OF FISHING ENTERPRISES OF PRIMORSKY TERRITORY: STUDY OF RETURNS TO SCALE

It is widely believed that only large fishing companies can provide a high level of production efficiency and the efficiency of economic activity in general. The paper studies the issue of the influence of the size and scale of fishing companies on their performance. For this purpose, the stages of quantitative measurement of the scale of this influence are established. This paper explores in detail the intellectual roots of the concept of returns to scale and presents a review of the literature that studies the relationship between the size of operation, performance, and other indicators of production efficiency. Using the data for eighteen Primorsk fishing companies, indicators of scale (“The volume of production per conditional ton of yield”) and performance (“The volume of production per worker”) have been calculated. On the basis of these indicators, it is found that large-scale Primorye fisheries are not always efficient in terms of workforce productivity, which proves the existence of a complex relationship between enterprise size and productivity of its resources. The difference in performance and efficiency is more likely to depend on the difference in manufacturing technologies rather than returns to scale. The results demonstrate the importance of distinguishing between the categories of “returns to scale” and “return to size” and suggest that the increase in productivity among small companies can be achieved by expanding their access to advanced technologies, not just by increasing their scale. The study is positioned as a pilot one and requires the further profound development of the methodology based on the results obtained.