EFFICIENT MANAGEMENT OF OCEAN FISHERIES

This paper considers the problems of efficient management of common property ocean fisheries. The paper forwards the proposition that Pigovian taxes do not constitute a feasible method for fisheries management due to their huge data requirements. It appears, on the other hand, that the fundamental production externalities in ocean fisheries may in many cases be eliminated by instituting an appropriately designed system of property rights. A particular management method based on individual property rights in the fishery and discussed in the paper is not only capable of restoring economic efficiency in valuable ocean fisheries, it is also extremely informationally efficient in the sense that very little centralized collection of information is required for its operation. A further important advantage of this particular method is that it generalizes in a straightforward manner to multispecies fisheries. It appears, moreover, that this approach may also be applied to other cases of inefficient use of common natural resources.