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This article reviews the authors' earlier attempts to incorporate the theories of capital and investment into fisheries economics and argues that such dynamic analysis is now of immediate policy relevance. It also discusses some limitations to the earlier analysis and means of addressing them. It then goes on to point to two areas of potential future research, with the first of these being an expansion of work initiated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and others on the economics of the required massive investment in hitherto overexploited capture fishery resources, giving particular emphasis to the consequences of non-malleable human capital. The second concerns intra-EEZ management of fishery resources and the growing need for greater application of game theory to the management of such resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new and acute management problem, now the focus of a major U.N. conference, has arisen in recent years in international fisheries. The problem concerns the management of transboundary fishery resources, in the form of resources to be found in both the coastal state EEZ and the adjacent high seas. The resources are commonly referred to as "straddling" stocks. This article provides a preliminary exploration of the management issue. It reviews the historical and legal background and asks how far the now well developed economic analysis of the management of transboundary fishery resources in the form of resources "shared" by two or more coastal states will take us in examining this second and more recent transboundary fishery management problem. The answer is a very limited distance only. The article concludes by pointing to questions arising from this resource management issue demanding further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents a reply from Colin W. Clark, Gordon R. Munro, and U. Rashid Sumaila, authors of "Limits to the Privatization of Fishery Resources," to a criticism of that paper by R. Quentin Grafton, Tom Kompas, and Ray Hillborn. Topics discussed include whether profit maximization can result in stock extinction in privately-owned fisheries, and whether the existence of a stock effect makes possible an optimal profit-seeking strategy from which extinction results. An appendix is included that explains fundamental bioeconomic theory involving a nonlinear function for harvest production.

A debate is emerging over the extent to which privatization of fishery resources is socially desirable. The "pessimists" argue that there are strict limits to socially optimal privatization of such resources. The "optimists" maintain that there are no effective limits to privatization and that the decades old fear that privatization could, in some cases, lead to resource extinction are of theoretical interest only. We argue here that these fears are, regrettably, not baseless and that there are definite limits to socially desirable privatization. We discuss means by which such limits could be identified on a fishery-by-fishery basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the impact of the advance of property rights in fisheries upon the management of internationally shared fishery resources. The management of these shared fishery resources did, in fact, come to prominence because of a revolutionary advance in state property rights to fishery resources through the advent of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) regime. The revolution in state property rights to fishery resources is not yet complete, however. The incompleteness of the revolution, it is argued, creates serious difficulties for the effective management for an important class of shared fishery resources, namely straddling and highly migratory fish stocks. The paper then discusses the impact, actual and potential, of the development of private property rights in fisheries upon the management of these resources. The discussion is speculative, however, and can be no more than that until there has been further advances in the game theoretic analysis of shared fish stock management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the time consistency problem associated with buyback schemes, arising from the fact that the schemes may be anticipated by vessel owners. After reviewing and elaborating upon the key results of our recently published article on buybacks and limited-entry programs, we discuss the consequences of combining buybacks with ITQ schemes, or the equivalent, instead of limited-entry programs. We conclude that substituting ITQ schemes for limited-entry programs cannot be relied upon to eliminate fully the time consistency problem. We suggest that what may be required is a management program that combines rights-based schemes with taxes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a letter from the editor, which discusses articles in the issue. Articles in this issue including “Recent Developments in Fisheries Economics,” is discussed as well as topics including marine life protection, the fishing and fishery industry, natural resources and ecology.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Fisheries & Aquatic Sciences is the property of Canadian Science Publishing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Climate regime shifts occur at irregular intervals and have profound and persistent impacts on ocean temperature and circulation patterns and on the dynamics of marine fish populations. Despite a growing scientific literature and some attention to the implications of such regime shifts for domestic fisheries, the issue has received little attention in the context of international fishery management. This paper presents evidence for the significance of climatic regime shifts, and draws upon the recent history of conflict between Canada and the United States over Pacific salmon management to illustrate the dangers that unpredicted, unanticipated environmental regime shifts pose for efforts to maintain international cooperation. This suggests a need for greater attention to this issue. Fishery agreements can be made more resilient to the impacts of such environmental changes by explicitly building in flexibility -- for example, by allowing the use of side payments. In addition, pre-agreements on procedures to be followed in the event of sustained changes in fish stock productivity or migration patterns, and cooperation on developing common scientific understandings, can help to prevent destructive conflicts. Finally, the literature employing game theoretic shared-fishery models could be further developed to focus on providing practical guidance for maintaining cooperation in the presence of unpredictable and persistent environmental changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations (UN) Fish Stocks Agreement of 1995 arose in response to a worldwide resource management crisis involving those transboundary fishery resources found both within the coastal state Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and the adjacent high seas--highly migratory fish stocks and straddling fish stocks. The need for the Agreement rested upon the inadequacies of those articles of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea pertaining to the management of high-seas fishery resources. The Agreement is on the verge of coming into force. However, ratification is not implementation. With the aid of basic theory of games, both non-cooperative and cooperative, an attempt is made to assess, from an economist's perspective, the long-term viability of the Agreement, and the accompanying regime of Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RMFOs). Certain key issues remain unresolved, but there are, nonetheless, grounds for cautious optimism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intergovernmental United Nations Conference on Highly Migratory and Straddling Stocks, initiated in 1993 and finished in 1995, addressed the conservation and management of fishery resources located both within the coastal state 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and the adjacent high seas. These types of marine resources continue to be a source for international conflicts and debates. The original United Nations Law of the Sea of 1982 failed to address transboundary fisheries in a proper way. In particular, the agreement did not recognize the emergence of the complicated ‘straddling stock’ issue. In the new United Nations Law of the Sea agreement of 1995, a consensus was reached that the management of the straddling and highly migratory fish stocks should be carried out through regional fisheries management organizations. We present a review of the straddling stock issues in the international agreement emerging from the negotiations within the United Nations. The review is contrasted with and clarified by game theoretic analyses. We also discuss one international fishery exemplifying the case, the Norwegian spring-spawning herring. The main conclusion is that the local problems, faced during the stage of setting up regional fisheries organizations for the management of straddling and highly migratory fish stocks, are expected to be much more complicated and difficult to solve as compared to the cases of ‘shared fish stocks’. In the current paper, we present two reasons for this increased complexity. The first is the larger number of players as compared to the case of ‘shared fish stocks’ and the second is the possibility of new members entering the regional fisheries organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An obituary for Anthony Dalton Scott, former professor at University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, is presented.

Focuses on the straddling fish stocks that extend beyond the boundary of Canada's Exclusive Economic Zone where they are subject to exploitation by distant water fishing nations. Progress in developing the economics of management for straddling fish stocks; Use of the Canada-Spain turbot war to illustrate non-cooperative transboundary fishery games.

This article provides an overview both of recent theoretical developments in fisheries economics and of major policy issues in Canadian fisheries. It is argued that the chief theoretical development over the past fifteen years consisted of a decisive shift from static to dynamic analysis. The major policy issues reviewed are the limitation of entry to fisheries, the management of transboundary stocks, and co-operative arrangements with distant water nations. Far from being unique to Canada, the issues are common among coastal states implementing Extended Fisheries Jurisdiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract. This paper investigates the question of the optimal management of renewable resources jointly owned by two states. A dynamic model of fisheries is combined with Nash's theory of two-person co-operative games. Conflicts in the management strategies of the two states arising from differences in perceptions of the social rate of discount, fishing effort costs, and consumer preferences are examined. Cases are considered in which the two partners can and cannot make side or transfer payments to one another. It is concluded that side payments greatly ease the resolution of resource management conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses implications of persistent, irreducible scientific uncertainty pertaining to marine ecosystems. It discusses combination of levels of uncontrollability of catches and incidental mortality with uncertainty that implies traditional approaches to fisheries management would be persistently unsuccessful. It also propose the use of protected areas marine reserves as components of future fisheries management programs.

This paper studies the effects of irreversibility of capital investment upon optimal exploitation policies for renewable resource stocks. It is demonstrated that although the long-term optimal sustained yield is not affected by the assumption of irreversibility (except in extreme cases), the short-term dynamic behavior of an optimal policy may depend significantly upon the assumption. It is suggested that the results may have profound implications for problems of rehabilitation of overexploited fisheries and other renewable resource stocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research, the intertemporal optimal management of subsidies offered by the environmental regulator and the dynamic conflict between two groups of economic agents involved in environmental quality are discussed. First the environmental model is examined in its optimal control management form with two state variables. The analysis of the improved model, inspecting the social planner's decision (policy) variable, the variable which influences not only environmental quality but the national budget stock, reveals that is dependent on the growth of the national budget stock. A negative growth rate leads to the long run saddle point equilibrium, while an incremental growth rate, but less than the model's discount rate, leads to an interesting complicated limit cycle equilibrium, for which under certain parameter values the orbit's phase portrait can be drawn. For the dynamic game model between the social planner and natural resource exploiters, the equilibrium conditions are examined. It is rather a richer than the point equilibrium for which the cyclical strategies have great importance. Therefore, the conditions for that rich equilibrium are found. As a continuation, the paper concludes that the equilibrium condition is that the players' discount rates are both greater than the national budget interest rate. Finally, the certain values of the equilibrium strategies and national budget stock are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does international trade increase the risk of renewable-resource collapse? We show that the answer is affirmative if trade increases the variety of goods and the resource is harvested under open access. Then there is increased likelihood of collapse both as a steady-state outcome and following shocks to the stock. Two separate mechanisms underlie the results. (1) Trade gives resource harvesters access to new varieties of goods. To enable buying these goods, they exert more harvesting effort. (2) The resource constitutes a new variety for other countries, implying that the resource price increases with trade openness, especially when the stock is small, which makes the resource “exclusive.” Unlike in the existing literature, which predicts that trade cannot lead to collapse, each of our two mechanisms can cause collapse and they both increase the vulnerability to shocks. We present several examples of collapses that can plausibly be attributed to each of the mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of fishery subsidies on resource stocks in 23 OECD countries during 1996-2011. Results show that the effect of subsidies depends on the type of subsidy and the management regime. Within this sample, cost-reducing subsidies have no effect on stocks if management is individual quota based but have negative effects if management uses traditional input/output restrictions. Subsidies for improving fishery management and infrastructure produce beneficial effects on stocks under traditional management, but no effect with individual quota-based management. These results suggest global efforts to reform fishery subsidies should be carried out in a highly selective manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses normative exploitation of common renewable resources with changes in technology and technical, allocative, and scale efficiency that exacerbate the commons problem and externality. Their impact depends on the rate and nature of change, investment, and state of property rights. An augmented fundamental equation of renewable resources with a modified marginal stock effect and a new marginal technology effect account for changes in disembodied and embodied technology and technical efficiency. Neglecting these changes generates misleading policy advice and dynamic inefficiency with overaccumulation of physical and natural capital and sizable foregone rents. An empirical application illustrates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article we investigate the possibility that a regulatory regime designed to maximize the profitability of the early Dutch whaling industry could have simultaneously guaranteed the biological sustainability of the eastern Arctic Bowhead whale. We find that policies with economic profit as the sole objective could have saved the whales, as well as increasing the incomes of the whalers, under assumptions commonly made in fisheries models. However, the necessary assumptions are implausible. Under more historically relevant assumptions we find that regulation could not have simultaneously increased profits and preserved the stock of whales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A bibliography on maritime history and related topics, particularly in reference to Canada, is presented, which includes the book "Canada Rediscovered" by Robert McGhee and the articles "Nineteenth-Century American Banks Fishing Under Sail: Its Health and Injury," by Raoul Andersen and "Canadian Marine Training: Time to Change Course? A Comparative Comment," by Edgar Gold.