NANCY Seminar – Philippe MARCOUL (University of Alberta)

Event details :

Title: Partnerships in the Commons

Abstract: In commercial fisheries, the fishing operations of a vessel are never really independent of the other vessels’ operations. Commons result in congestive externalities on fishing sites, which impact vessels’ behavior and create additional operation costs. At the same time, short-term stock effects, whereby fish stocks are locally depleted by a vessel, force other vessels to search further for fish. We show that these essential traits of the fishing process explain the old and universal practice of crew partnerships, also known as ‘lays’. In this framework, we show that adopting a profit-sharing or a catch-sharing partnership with the crew is an equilibrium for vessel owners. Three important features arise. First, crew partnership share increases with the magnitude of externalities. Second, fishing effort (and hence fish mortality) can increase when the cost of fishing operations due to congestion increases and finally, the robustness of this equilibrium arises from harvest uncertainty; a basic feature of fishing activities. Compared to fisheries with regular wages, lay partnerships result in larger harvests but lead to lower vessel profits.