Economic Efficiency in the Coastal Small-scale Fisheries in Lagos State, Nigeria

This study was aimed at assessing how efficient the small scale fishing units in Lagos State, Nigeria use the monetary inputs: costs of gear repairs, craft repairs, fuel, fishing losses, hired labor, and the residual costs of craft and gear. Between January and December, 113 mechanized and 43 non-mechanized fishing units in 21 purposively chosen coastal villages were surveyed bi-monthly through questionnaire administration. The input and output (earnings) data were analyzed using the linear regression and Cobb-Douglas technique in monetary terms and Ordinary Least Square methods to determine the elasticities of the fishing units in the wet and dry seasons. The regression output for the non-mechanized category produced good fits for the yield models with adjusted R 2 values range of 0.88 in the wet to 0.98 in the dry seasons. The mechanized category showed respective regression outputs of AR 2 of 0.94 and 0.62. The Durbin-Watson statistic showed moderate multicollinearity amongst the chosen variable inputs. The non-mechanized category had three significant explanatory variables in the dry season while five were significant in the wet season at the 0.05 level. The mechanized category had significant F-ratio values at the 0.05 level in the seasons. The seasonal technical efficiency evaluated using the chosen cost variables showed that there was inefficient combination of the inputs for optimal production