Collective Share Quotas and the Role of Fishermen’s Organizations in Ex-Vessel Price Determination

This article examines the collective bargaining efforts of atomized fishermen with a monopsony-like buying sector. Government allocation of collective share quotas to fishermen’s organizations triggered the voluntary formation of cooperative fishermen’s bargaining associations, while a highly concentrated processing sector started behaving as a countervailing monopsony. This drove ex-vessel price determination into region-specific bilateral monopoly price bargaining. We estimate an empirical model of regional ex-vessel price determination, taking advantage of between-region regulatory differences to identify the differential effects on ex-vessel prices. Our model estimates the overall impact on regional ex-vessel prices from this process of institutional change. Our results show evidence of higher, policy-shift driven, ex-vessel prices at only one of the regions studied. This region had more favorable conditions for collective action and is where fishermen were able to achieve more stable, better organized fishermen’s associations.