Emerging Issues in Fisheries Management: An Intersection of Institutional and Resource Economics

Abstract

This dissertation investigates contemporary challenges and promising remedies regarding shery management: aquaculture production, trans-boundary fish movements, and the transition from open access to rights-based management. Aquaculture as a Backstop: Fisheries Management in the Presence of Aquaculture Production investigates aquaculture production in a context of capture fishery management. The study shows the impacts of aquaculture, as a backstop technology, on a capture fishery under optimal and open-access regimes. The study finds that aquaculture production serves as a backstop so long as the aquaculture production cost is smaller than the output price at the steady state. If the marginal user cost with a backstop is greater than without a backstop, aquaculture production contributes to conserving more wild stock compare to the case without aquaculture production. Cooperative Management of Trans-boundary Fish Stocks: Implications for the Tropical Tuna Management in the Pacific Island Region investigates cooperative management of trans-boundary fish stocks. The trans-boundary migration of fish stocks creates spatial externalities, and hence, makes international cooperation beneficial. This study provides a model to examine the relationship between fish migrations and cooperation. The model focuses on non-seasonal fish migration and takes stock leakages from exclusive economic zones into consideration. The study finds that leakages of stocks to international waters reduce the surplus gained from cooperative management. For a given stock leakage level, the surplus gain from cooperation increases with an increase in the gap between the two countries' fish migration rates. In order for two countries to reach a cooperation agreement, the country with higher migration rates may make side-payments to the other. Institutional Evolution in Fisheries Management: Scarcity and the Intensity of Governance investigates the evolution of shery management institutions. The study develops a model to show the optimal transition from open access to rights-based management. The study suggests that regulated open access, such as catch quota, can play a role as an intermediary institution before management switches to more efficient but costly rights-based management. The study nds that when there is learning by managing, catch quota may be used as an intermediary institution along the path to an individual transferable quota regime.