Discount rates, it is well-known, play an important role in the determining optimal extraction paths for natural resources. In fisheries analysis, as well as other natural resource use, constant discount rates are customarily assumed. In practical applications, the constant discount rate is often taken to be the social rate of...
To run the ITQ system as well as other components of the fisheries management system, the Icelandic government conducts a number of activities which may be regarded as fisheries management services. The most important of these are performed by (i) the Fisheries Directorate which maintains the quota registry and enforces...
Many ITQ fisheries are subject to an upper limit or cap on ITQ-holdings by individual companies. The economic rationale for these caps seems to be to reduce the opportunities for monopolistic behaviour by the companies. A possible social cost of the caps is that limiting company size in fisheries, especially...
In 2009 the World Bank published a study of the economic performance of the global marine fishery pertaining to the base year 2004. The key finding of this study was that the global fishery in 2004 was economically and biologically highly inefficient. More precisely, the difference between attainable and actual...
The concept of rents has a venerable history in economic theory. In his fundamental work on the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith defined the concept making it clear that rents were distinct from profits. Ricardo, building on the foundation laid by Adam Smith, similarly distinguished between profits and rents in...
ITQ systems generate ITQ prices. For any given ITQ-managed species there are typically two prices. One is for the annual (or seasonal) quota, the other is for the longer lasting ITQ-share. In well-functioning ITQ markets, these prices reveal important information about the fishery. In the single species framework, prices of...
It has been established that the path of a fishery over time, i.e. stocks, fleets, effort and profits, depends inter alia on the enforcement of the fisheries management rules in place. It has further been established that optimal enforcement of fisheries management rules depends inter alia on the shadow value...
This paper estimates current resource rents being generated in the Icelandic cod fishery and compares them to the maximum sustainable attainable ones. For this purpose a simple aggregative model of the cod fishery is specified and empirically estimated. It is found that in spite of the cod stock being in...
Weitzman's paper is useful because it provides the fisheries economics profession with a reason to re-examine certain elements of the currently accepted fisheries management theory. As a result, this contribution may lead to a more solid theoretical foundation for fisheries management. This, of course, is the way any science is...
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...