Internationally shared fish stocks, the high seas, and property rights in fisheries

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.