Beschreibung:
In commercial fisheries, the fishing decisions of a vessel are never really independent of the other vessels' decisions. Congestive externalities on fishing sites impact a vessel's behavior and create additional operation costs, while short-term stock effects, whereby fish stocks are locally depleted by a vessel, force other vessels to search further for fish. We show that this essential trait of the fishing process explains the old and universal practice of crew partnerships, also known as lays. We show that adopting a profit-sharing partnership with the crew is a unique equilibrium for the vessel owner. Three important features arise. First, crew partnership share increases with the magnitude of externalities. Second, fishing effort 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, partnerships result in larger harvests but often lead to lower vessel profits. We discuss the possibility of regulating the lay system. Profit-sharing partnerships also impact fisheries regulated with Individual Trading Quotas (ITQs). We show that such contracts create opportunities for vessels to manipulate ITQs lease price and degrade the allocative efficiency of ITQs