The distributive economic impacts of Hawaii's commercial fishery: A SAM analysis

Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) models include a comprehensive accounting of regional income and institutional factors, and are intended to be capable of assessing distributional analysis. However, in practice, studies generally construct models that are not appropriately designed to capture income linkages. In this study, we demonstrate the use of SAM modeling to assess the income distribution linkages of Hawaii's commercial fishery sector. We identify the distributional characteristics of the economic impact from the fishery industry by mapping industry labor inputs to a state level occupational matrix prior to the linking of household accounts. The distributional analysis of the SAM indicates that Hawaii's longline sectors impact middle income groups most significantly with modest linkages to lower income groups.