Economic Incentives and Global Fisheries Sustainability

Christopher Costello, John Lynham, Sarah E. Lester and Steven D. Gaines ()
Additional contact information
Steven D. Gaines: Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106

Annual Review of Resource Economics, 2010, vol. 2, issue 1, pages 299-318

Abstract: Widespread global collapses of fisheries corroborate decades-old predictions by economists, made long before large-scale industrialization of the world's fisheries, that open access would have deleterious ecological and economic effects on fishery resources. Incentive-based alternatives (collectively called catch shares) have been shown to generate pecuniary benefits, but little empirical evidence exists for, or against, a link to global fisheries sustainability. We report and expand on an analysis of >11,000 fisheries worldwide, in which we investigated the causes of fisheries collapse from 1950 to 2003. Using a program evaluation design, we found that catch shares prevent and, in some specifications, reverse fisheries collapse. Subsequent scientific studies reinforce and challenge these findings, suggesting fruitful avenues for future research linking incentive-based resource management to sustainability.

Keywords: catch shares; marine conservation; property rights; ITQs; environmental solutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q22 Q57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations View citations in EconPapers (1) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.resource.012809.103923 (application/pdf)
Full text downloads are only available to subscribers. Visit the abstract page for more information.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:anr:reseco:v:2:y:2010:p:299-318

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.annualreviews.org/action/ecommerce

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Annual Review of Resource Economics from Annual Reviews
Address: Annual Reviews 4139 El Camino Way Palo Alto, CA 94306, USA
Series data maintained by http://www.annualreviews.org ().