A requiem for the IFQ in US fisheries?

Individual transferable quotas in the Baltic Sea herring fishery: A socio-bioeconomic analysis

“…Nowadays individual transferable quotas (ITQs) are widely implemented from which New Zealand, Iceland, Australia, US and Estonia are examples (Arnason, 1990;Campbell et al, 2000;Gridle & Macinko, 2000;Vetemaa et al, 2002;Batsone & Sharp, 2003). Albeit the ITQs have not and probably will not solve all the commercial fishery problems, the general consequence of the implementation of ITQ-system is the improvement over current practices, or possible alternative management schemes (Squires et al, 1998).…”

Renegotiating property rights in the Florida golden crab fishery

“…To a large extent, the ideal setting for this approach would mirror that of one found in economic theory and modeling: enough fishers and diversity among fishers to create a functional market for ITQs, a functional market for the product (fish), and an opportunity to enter and leave the fishery (Anderson 1986;Homans and Wilen 2005); where harvesting rights will be secure, and it is feasible to set a total allowable catch (Criddle and Macinko 2000). The literature examining the implementation of ITQs confirms that these conditions do indeed exist in many fisheries, and that these conditions are important to functional ITQ regimes (Grafton 1996;Squires et al 1998;Arnason 2002;Newell et al 2005).…”

“…Freeriding, shirking, corruption, and rent seeking are examples (Ostrom et al 1993) Many forms of transaction costs are problematic during the establishment of a new institutional arrangement (Libecap 1989;North 1990). Strategic costs, particularly rent seeking, are potent issues during the initial allocation of a de facto property right such as ITQs (Criddle and Macinko 2000;Phillips et al 2002) and have been documented in the allocation of other common pool resources (Libecap 2007). Thus, understanding the role transaction costs played in the efforts to develop an ITQ approach to golden crab management is critical.…”

Paper Fish and Policy Conflict: Catch Shares and Ecosystem-Based Management in Maine's Groundfishery

“…Similarly, since at the least the early 1990s, Maine fishermen have observed that "what you don't use, you lose," meaning that permits not used to maximum capacity are likely to be rescinded. Evidence from Alaskan harvest cooperatives, which preceded and resemble New England sectors, shows that although transaction costs and rent-seeking may be lowered at the Council level, less transparent political maneuvering at the cooperative level, and even Congressional intervention, can narrow the range of fishery beneficiaries, and can introduce further rent-seeking around share allocations (Criddle and Macinko 2000). Incentives have also risen for other Maine fishermen to narrow their scope of ecological concern.…”

“…Market distortions, rent-seeking, information asymmetries, and path dependencies arise (Copes 1986, Davis 1996, Rieser 1997, National Research Council 1999, Criddle and Macinko 2000, McCay 2004, Degnbol et al 2006, Bromley 2009, Pinkerton and Edwards 2009). …”