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The fishing problem is not only related to the conservation of Fish Stocks but also to the {Link without Title} of fishing activity. Causes of the fishing problem can be found in property rights regime of fishing resources. Overexploitation and rent dissipation of fishermen arise in open-access Fisheries as was shown in Gordon (1953, 1954). Only rent dissipation of fishermen arise in a regulated fishery where incentives of fishermen to maximize their catches are not modified but the output level is limited by any mean. In open-access resources, like fish stocks, the impossibility of excluding others provokes that the fishermen who want to increase its capture have to do it taking the share of the capture of someone else, generating a negative externality. As a result, fishermen compete against each other for the fish in the so-called “race to fish”. This provokes a capitalization process that leads them to increase their costs until they are equal to their revenue, dissipating their rent completely. Institutional arrangements that encourage fishermen to invest in the fishing resources by mean of reducing their catches are required to solve the fishing problem. Different approaches have been taken in order to generate incentives to protect fish stocks. Individual transferable quotas or the participation of fishermen in the management (co-management) have been implemented in some Fisheries for sustainability. Nevertheless, important difficulties arise in transboundary and / or highly migratory fisheries that require the agreement of several countries for their management. The concept of fishing capacity arise in this context that poses to the policy-maker the necessity of controlling the maximum potential of capture of fishing fleets and its comparison with the sustainable level. FISHING CAPACITY (TECHNOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE) Since a technological perspective, fishing capacity can be defined either following an input or an output orientation. According to a technological perspective input-oriented fishing capacity is defined as the maximum available Capital Stock in a fishery that is fully utilized at the maximum technical efficiency in a given time period, given resource and market conditions (Kirkley and Squires 1999). On the other hand, output-oriented fishing capacity is defined as the maximum catch a vessel (fleet) can produce if inputs are fully utilized given the biomass, the fixed inputs, the age structure of the fish stock, and the present stage of technology (Vestergaard, et al. 2003). Technical efficiency of each vessel of the fleet is assumed necessary to attain this maximum catch. The degree of Capacity Utilization results from the comparison of the actual level of output (input) and the capacity output (input) of a vessel or a fleet. REFERENCES: Gordon, H. S. 1953. An Economic Approach to the optimum utilization of Fishery Resources, Journal of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada, 10(7), 442-57. Gordon, H.S. 1954. The Economic Theory of an Common-Property Resource: The Fishery, Journal of the Political Economy, 62, 124-42. Kirkley, J.E. and Squires, D. 1999. Capacity and Capacity Utilization in Fishing Industries, Discussion paper 99-16, Department of Economics, University of California, San Diego. Vestergaard, N., Squires, D. and Kirkley, J.E. 2003. Measuring Capacity and Capacity Utilization in Fisheries. The Case of the Danish Gillnet Fleet, Fisheries Research, 60(2-3), 357-68. |
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