Implementation and management of an ITQ fishery involves significant and costly administrative activities. These activities include formulating and implementing policy rules, monitoring and enforcement to deter illegal behavior, and economic and marine research. In this article we construct a model of a competitive ITQ system to analyze how the distribution of administrative costs between the public and a fishing industry can affect the equilibrium in the quota market, including equilibrium level of administrative costs, and derive results about the optimal distribution of these costs.

In this study, we analyse effort optimisation in common rights-based joint-stock artisanal fisheries when several objectives are pursued by the authorities and the fleets are heterogeneous. The purpose is to discuss policy options available to the authorities and their implications in terms of trade-offs between goals. We apply a multi-objective programming model to the sardine and anchovy artisanal fisheries in central southern Chile. The results suggest that the regulatory system generates inefficient solutions for profit and employment maximisation goals.

The illegal exploitation of wild abalone in South Africa has been escalating since 1994, despite increased enforcement, leading to collapse in some sections of its range. South Africa banned all wild abalone fishing in 2008 but controversially reopened it in 2010.

Regulating common-pool resources is welfare enhancing for society but not necessarily for all users who therefore may oppose regulations. We examine the short-term impact of common-pool resource regulations on welfare distribution.

This paper measures for potential profit in the North Sea mixed demersal fishery for cod, haddock and whiting. Dynamic bioeconomic models for three UK fisheries are developed, incorporating both population dynamics and economic structure. Actual profit in 2006, for the three UK fleets included in the analysis, is estimated at £10.3 million. If the TAC remains unchanged but vessels are allowed to harvest at near efficient levels with fleet size reduced accordingly, potential profit is measured at £34.5 million.

This note acknowledges Jens Warming's contributions (1911, 1931) on what has since come to be known as the open access problem in fisheries. Warming, in a static framework, suggested an optimal landing tax before Pigou (1920) and described the sole owner solution later suggested by Scott (1955b). I describe these results using Warming's framework and point to his previously overlooked contribution concerning the dynamic aspect of fisheries.

We study dynamic labour supply using data on paua (abalone) divers in New Zealand. The divers face stable, flat prices per kilogram after each catch, but experience transitory wage changes due to varying weather and water conditions, and are free to vary their daily working hours and display an intermittent working pattern. We find nonlinear wage elasticities, rejecting the standard neo-classical prediction that these divers should work long hours during days when wages are high and quit early during days when hourly wages are low.

Although Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) provide an increasingly popular policy tool for protecting marine stocks and biodiversity, they pose high costs for small-scale fisherfolk who have few alternative livelihood options in poor countries. MPAs often address this burden on local households by providing some benefits to compensate locals and/or induce compliance with restrictions.

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in poor countries typically address the impact of fishing restrictions on rural resource-dependent villagers because of their mandate and because achieving conservation goals requires altering household fishing behavior.