Fishing Technology and Optimal Distribution of Harvest Rates

Abstract

In this paper we analyze the optimal management of a joint ownership fishery exploitation model where agents use different fishing gears. As opposed to other works, we consider a model in which the fishing technology affects resource's growth not only through the harvest function, but also through the natural growth rate of the resource. The main objective is to capture the evidence that some fishing gears alter the habitat of the resource, and may alter the natural growth rate of the resource. The main result we obtain is that, when the natural growth of the resource is altered by the fishing technology, the optimal stock is not independent of how harvest quotas are distributed among the agents. Thus, in this context, a fishing policy that determines, first, the optimum stock and, secondly, decides on how to distribute the harvest among the different agents will not be efficient.