The objective of this paper is to illustrate that economic institutions matter, i.e., that different rules of trade present different incentives for bidding, asking and trading in new markets, and that these different incentives lead to different price discovery patterns which yield materially different outcomes. In a laboratory tradable fishing...
Fisheries worldwide continue to suffer from the negative consequences of open access. In 1986, New Zealand responded by establishing an individual transferable quota (ITQ) system that by 1998 included 33 species and more than 150 markets for fishing quotas. We assess these markets in terms of trends in market activity,...
It is now widely recognized that property rights based fisheries management regimes are well
suited for generating efficiency in fisheries. Apart from access licences, which are very low
quality property rights, individual quotas (IQs) and individual transferable quotas (ITQs) are the
most widely applicable and, indeed, the most commonly applied...
With the publication of the NOAA Draft Policy on Catch Shares, which
encourages US Management Councils to adopt Catch Share Programs (yet
another new name for LAPs, ITQs, or IFQs) there will likely be more
deliberations on such programs. With changes mandated in the revised
Magnuson-Stevens Act and the suggestions...
The New England Multispecies (groundfish) fishery is about to implement
the catch share management system, where self-identified groups of
harvesters called sectors receive quota allocations of total allowable catch
(TAC) proportional to the harvest history of their members. Joining a
sector is voluntary, thus there will be both sector members...
A new type of fisheries management approach termed catch share is set to
be implemented in the US Northeast groundfish fisheries in May 2010.
This approach gives a group of harvesters, called a sector, a portion of the
TAC to manage independently - a hybrid of co-management and individual
quota....
The case for assigning private property rights in fisheries has been
thoroughly studied but has lead to a new debate over whether rights should
be allocated to groups or individuals. The New England groundfish fishery
provides a rich context in which to study this question. Beginning in 2004,
several dozen...
In many fisheries, harvesters of different scales, different gears, or on
different sides of political boundaries crossed by a single stock are
effectively managed separately. The New England Multispecies
(groundfish) fishery is about to dramatically expand the number of
management systems in place concurrently, by allocating portions of the
total...
Amendment 1 to the Golden Tilefish Fishery Management Plan (FMP),
which implemented the most recent catch share program in the Northeast
United States, became effective on November 1, 2009. It replaced a
program that allocated a fixed percentage of annual quota to three groups
of vessel owners with a program...
Individual transferable quotas (ITQs) have been used in several countries worldwide to regulate access to
marine fisheries. While ITQs can improve the economic efficiency of fisheries, in practice they are not a
panacea and distribution and equity issues have been raised in many cases. To overcome those issues,
ITQ systems...
Entrepreneurial New Zealand harvesters created a viable diving fishery for King Clams, Panopea zelandica, in the 1970's
contributing to the development of allocation rights to harvest. Once under the quota management system (QMS), however,
allocations for allowable catch do not reflect the harvest potential for this fishery. Expectations for quota...
Concerns about declining stock and profitability in the Tasmanian rock
lobster industry led to the introduction of individual transferable quota
(ITQ) management in 1998. In this study, fisher groups were categorised
by effort and quota ownership traits to examine response to revised
management, and how profit drivers moderated this change....
Changes in ownership of limited entry permits by “local” residents of the region where a fishery occurs
may have significant economic and social implications for fishery-dependent regions. This paper
examines changes in local permit ownership in Alaska salmon fisheries, for which a long-term decline in
rural local permit ownership is...
In 1996, the US New England Fishery Management Council formed a
technical team (PDT) to develop a new plan for Atlantic Herring (Clupea
harengus harengus). The inshore stock was close to fully exploited while
the offshore stock was underexploited. There were few full-time herring
harvesters and very few processors. Fresh...
ITQ introduction has had several effects on fisheries in terms of, for
example, changes in the composition of the fishing fleet and fishing
efficiency gains. After ITQ introduction in the Tasmanian rock lobster
industry in 1998, an increasing number of fishers have become dependent
on quota leasing to catch fish...
In the administration of its quota management system (QMS), New Zealand sets a “deemed value” fee that must be paid for any landings in excess of annual catch entitlements (ACE.) The deemed value system is an example of a price-capped cap-and-trade system (Roberts and Spence 1976). This paper argues that...
In renewable resource industries, labor is commonly paid with a share of
the harvested resource rather than with a per unit-of-effort wage. Share
cropping in agriculture is one well-known example and entitlement of the
crew to a share of the revenue from the sale of the catch is almost universal...
The literature on ITQs as a fishery management tool predominantly
assumes that all input prices are parametric. In many if not most fisheries,
however, fishing crews are paid a share of the profits. The paper explores
the efficiency of ITQ markets when crews are remunerated under a share
system. Efficiency...
Employing an experimental approach, we examine whether the efficiency of fishery management
can be achieved under Individual Transferable Quotas regimes. We analyze the situation in
which subjects can choose one from two vessel types: a large-scale or a small-scale. The fixed
cost for the large-scale is higher than that for...
The introduction of Individual Transferable Quota (ITQ) fisheries management is controversial as it
typically results in fewer active vessels, fewer vessel jobs, and the remaining vessel crew earning a lower
share of vessel revenues with capital interests, including the new interest "quota ownership", increasing
their revenue share. However, the move...
In discussing property rights, efficiency and fisheries management economic literature often refers to a fishery with a hypothetical single owner, comparing it to fisheries with more fragmented ownership. Through a range of effort reductions, since the near collapse of the fishery in the early 1980s, the Exmouth Gulf Prawn fishery...
Overcapacity is probably the most fundamental challenge to fisheries management as it can lead to both overfishing and to low profitability. Most of the Norwegian fisheries have limited entry, through the use of annual permits (coastal fleet) and licences (ocean going fleet) in combination with individual vessel quotas (IVQ). Limited...
While right-based managements have often been encouraged as effective
management tools, few studies presented an empirical analysis on the
effects of those systems. This paper focuses on a special form of Territorial
Use Rights Fisheries called an income pooling system, and examines the
effects of the system empirically. Income pooling...
This research examines bargaining power in the market for Northeast
Multispecies Days-at-Sea (DAS). In 2004, the DAS system was converted
to a tradable input control system. Characteristics of the program include:
1) trading restrictions based on length and power to limit increases in
output, 2) prohibitions that limit the ability...
With a national policy on catch shares in progress in the United States and
increasing use of transferable fishing rights in fisheries worldwide, it is
important to understand how the markets created by these programs
function in the real world. This paper presents information collected from
interviews with Florida spiny...
Illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) abalone fishing in South Africa has grown to such an extent that the legal total allowable catch has been progressively reduced from 640 tons in 1995, to a proposed zero for 2008. We present research on the socio-economics of the IUU abalone fishery and the...
A serious impediment blocks advancement of individual transferable quota (ITQ) policy in the United States, particularly in North Pacific fisheries being considered for ITQ management. The traditional ITQ design, that allocates rights to only the harvesting sector, unintentionally expropriates wealth/property interests from the co-dependent-processing sector. This regulatory expropriation is a...
The current Senate Bill to reauthorize the Magnuson/Stevens Act, the key US fishery management law,
will allow some significant changes in the way that Individual Transferable Quota programs can be
developed. First, the bill will expand the range of individuals who will be permitted to obtain harvesting
privileges. In addition...
When dealing with time, a fishery manager faces a major difficulty. On an N-period time horizon, should he follow
several short-run objectives for every n sub-period, or should he consider only the long-run objective? If a European
manager trying to implement a stock recovery plan prefers to achieve the long-run...
Community fishery rights are use rights (the right to take part in fishing) and/or management rights (the right to be involved in managing the fishery) implemented at a local, community level. While by no means a new invention, community rights are receiving renewed attention as a mechanism to improve the...
As the British Columbia salmon fishery developed, the Canadian government, with constitutional responsibility for the resource, faced a number of critical turning points in management policy. In early years, partly for expediency, the allocation of fishing privileges often resulted in efficient levels of effort but little attempt was made to...
The auction system is rather rare in the world fisheries. During this three-year period, 2001-2003, fish quotas in the RFE and the North (Barents Sea) were auctioned off, with the by far largest volumes in the RFE. The main purpose of auctioning quotas for fish and marine invertebrates was to...
This paper investigates whether policy and governance reforms for transforming the Squid industry, especially those related to redistribution of fishing rights and improved conditions of employment, have impacted positively on the crewmembers. Governance has two key elements; firstly, in the absence of government or lack of capacity to enforce legislation...
The Australian coral reef fin-fish fishery (CRFFF) on the Great Barrier Reef has been managed under ITQs since 2004. A large number of different reef species (>155) are covered by the management plan, but the primary species in terms of value and volume landed are coral trout and red throat...
The status of fisheries resources on coastal and offshore areas is getting worse in Taiwan. Thus, to establish a fishery resources management system has become the main task among stakeholders. In this study, we would like to examine the feasibility of imposing the community-based co-management system and setting closed fishing...
Local wisdom-based fisheries resource management had been done by Gangga sub district community since long time ago until 1965 in form of sawen, a traditional ritual conducted by wektu telu Moslems. In 1966 - 1999 the ritual disappeared because of changes of people's minds and economic-politic situation. In year 2000...
In July 2011 the European Commission acknowledged that "Our current system is not working in favour of sustainability. Too many fleet segments live on low profits, depend on subsidies for survival. 'Business as usual' is not an option".
Indeed, the reform of the policy "must not be yet another piecemeal,...