by
A.L.W. Tuomi
Director, Recreational Fisheries Branch
Fisheries and Marine Service Environment Canada
Ottawa, Canada
Mounting demands on all natural resources have brought about the need to assess the role and performance of sport fisheries. Though sport fishing ranks next only to swimming as a form of resource-based recreation, one of the main problems has been the lack of economic theory to assess recreational fisheries management and performance. Reasons for this lack and the importance of such theory development are outlined. It is then pointed out that the extension of commercial fisheries theory delineated by Copes (1972) applies equally to recreational fisheries, and that a comprehensive basis of theory for identifying, weighing and integrating optimal sport and commercial fisheries management goals and programmes is now available for study and adoption.
Les exigences toujours plus pressantes en ressources naturelles ont mis en évidence le besoin d'évaluer le rôle et le rendement de la pêche sportive. Même si la pêche sportive occupe le deuxième rang, après la natation, en tant que forme d'utilisation récréatives des ressources, l'un des principaux problèmes y affèrent est le manque de théorie économique pour en évaluer l'aménagement et le rendement. On expose les raisons de cet état de choses et l'importance de définir une telle théorie. On signale que la théorie de Copes (1972) sur les pêcheries commerciales peut s'adapter également à la pêche sportive et que l'on dispose donc, d'ores et déjà, d'une base théorique générale pour identifier, évaluer et intégrer d'une façon optimale les buts et les programmes d'aménagement des pêches sportive et commerciale.
In common with increasing demands on all natural resources, worldwide concerns relating to mounting leisure aspirations, population pressures, “limits to growth”, energy shortages, and rising costs of resource supply have brought about re-appraisals of the role and purpose of sport fisheries.
However, while remarkably little has been published with respect to the “purpose” of sport fisheries other than by anglers and related philosophical devotees, it would be a rare instance where resource managers variously concerned with sport fishery decisions have not agonized over some of the basic issues involved, e.g., how many fish should be “provided”, to whom, on what basis, and at the expense of what alternative uses of all the resources involved?
The purpose of this paper is to describe and explore a framework for identifying basic options in sport fishery goal formulation without indulging in either advocacy or the making of judgements as to what is, or would be, “right”. Considering the scope of the subject, this paper is intended to stimulate thought and study - comprehensiveness in almost any sense being recognized as impossible.
As background, a review is made in the next section of reasons why so little research seems to have been done in this field. Similarly, reasons why sport fisheries, and sport fisheries goal formulation, are important are outlined in the succeeding section. A delineation of the theory and the major options in fisheries goal formulation is then dealt with, followed by a look at related aspects of decision-making. Conclusions are then drawn pointing out how objectivity can now be improved in the understanding, formulation of goals and the management of fisheries.
There are general as well as specific reasons why so little seems to have been done respect of recreational goals analysis and synthesis.
One obvious explanation is that fisheries managers and experts have always routinely done a great deal in relation to goals (e.g., developing data, doing analysis, ranking alternatives), but the bulk of these analytical and advisory efforts have generally served as internal administrative inputs into the political decision-making process. Publication of this operational input, and its linkages to decisions that may be made, tend to be discretionary, and can range anywhere from a highly publicized and documented announcement heralding a new policy or development to simply an unannounced continuation or cessation of a programme.
Related to the foregoing are the increasing complexities and interdependencies in society which makes it genuinely difficult to keep pace, let alone bring about improvement in the administrative processes of public policy formulation. Both the need for such improvement and the difficulties involved are clearly evident in the efforts made in the last decade or so to apply systems analysis to governmental planning, programming and budgeting (i.e., PPB in Canada, PPBS in the United States and the equivalent endeavours and acronyms in other countries). But much of the early euphoria surrounding these approaches has disappeared with the realization that the progress made has not been easy and that computerized systems, per se, are not enough.1
There are also a number of specific aspects of sport fisheries which make goal formulation difficult. The first is that sport fishing is a want rather than a basic need, thus pitting views relating to consumer sovereignty against the variously perceived and exercised responsibilities of government. Taken further, angling is a discretionary leisure-time activity - or more precisely, a resource-based form of outdoor recreation. But besides epitomizing the “good life” in the public eye, sport fishing, from a public policy point of view, is actually a transcendent goal, i.e., one of society's more basic objectives which governmental “performance goals” (e.g., economic growth, full employment, equitable income distribution, etc.) are designed to support.2
Second, the angler is part of the conceptual problem. He or she is first and foremost, and always, a consumer, and as is the case with most consumers in the discretionary field, the satisfactions sought and enjoyed are highly subjective. So it should not be surprising that, in common with the whole field of leisure and recreation, there are no universally agreed-upon or soundly-based definitions of angling, except perhaps, for the aphorism that “angling is what you think it is”. At the same time, this lack of precision cannot disguise the fact that it is angler demand, direct or indirect, that not only confers value on the resources involved, but it is also the angler who ultimately defines both the product and the “business” of angling where by the angler simultaneously “produces” and consumes sport fishing.
In seeming contradiction to this, the third aspect is that there is no broadly accepted theory or holistic concept of sport fisheries management. Part of this deficiency can be attributed to the lack of agreement as to what is meant by the word management. As arbitrarily used here, management involves identification and responsibility for achieving society's goals respecting fishery supply and angler demand as these relate to the “production” and consumption of fishing. It is readily apparent, there is no lack of either scientific knowledge or management experience and capabilities in the field of the biological management of fish, the regulation of fish harvesting and the overall field of the conservation, protection and augmentation of fisheries. Suffice to say, the real deficiency lies in the area of socio-economic management of the demand for fishing, with progress in this respect being regarded as a prerequisite to the formulation of overall sport fisheries management theory and performance. Reflecting this imbalance, and contributing to the lack of central theory, is the view still held by some administrators that the management of common property sport fisheries is simply an extension or variation of commercial fisheries management. This, however, is not the case. The product is different (i.e., fishing rather than the fish). Thanks to angler subjectivity and its site-specific nature (to cite the more obvious reasons), sport fishing is by comparison an incredibly complex and angler-differentiated product (“Welfare is in the eye of the beholder”, Strumpel 1972,p. 72). The angler is also simultaneously both “producer” and ultimate consumer of fishing, after access has been obtained, while the comparable ultimate consumer buying fish as food in the grocery store or restaurant generally buys a product that has been variously “produced”, standardized and successively owned and sold by as many as three levels of industry. In short, in a common property sport fishery there is no industry with a proprietary interest in the product to serve as a buffer between the agency authorizing angler access and the mass consumer market. (Where sport fishing is a private, market good, both fisheries, and the right to fish can be owned, bought and sold in accordance with the laws that prevail).
Fourth, problems and misconceptions relating to economic evaluation also have to be identified as impediments to goal formulation. The generalized case for economic evaluation of sport fishery output is obvious: it is very difficult to propose, fund and operate projects (e.g., a hatchery) if the physical output cannot be valued so as to justify the public investment required (i.e., ideally, by quantifying the proposed generation of competitively superior net benefits as compared with alternative uses of all the resources involved).
Economic evaluation is admittedly expensive in terms of the time, money and the skills involved, particularly as, in most instances, the required data are simply not available and their collection becomes the first step. The validity of the methodological approaches available is still open to continuing argument. In some instances, the intransigence of the problems involved is such that practioners in this field, particularly economists, have tended to turn their attentions from the central issues for which evaluation is needed to what can best be called consumer research (e.g., studies of angler values, expectations, motivations, preferences, behaviour and related aspects of consumer decision-making). In other instances, economic evaluation has become an academic subject matter field for engrossing but arcane research. It is not really surprising that many administrators tend to look askance at economic evaluation. At the same time, not all of this scepticism is warranted. Firstly, economic evaluation has hitherto been primarily used to justify traditional fish supply management-oriented programmes (or the protection of fish): its obvious greater application to the demand side (to quantify either the waste or potential gain in marketing opportunities) has not been similarly perceived and acted upon. Secondly, economic evaluation is only a means to an end, i.e., knowing the “value” of a fishery for a specific purpose may in some instances be simply an interesting but irrelevant quantification of the problem if no decision-making application is made or possible. Thirdly, in a great many instances, adequate answers for specific decision-making purposes can be generated by using some of the much neglected sport fish marketing information that is available as well as by variations of the “direct” and “indirect” methodological approaches. However, it must be said, on balance, that little can be done about many of the problems of economic evaluation until sport fisheries goals are more clearly identified and agreed upon.
Finally, as a fourth aspect, it has to be recognized that there are many other factors bearing on the lack of central sport fisheries management theory. Entrenched public views and precedent-laden institutional arrangements can readily delay recognition of the need for let alone acceptance of change in time-honoured but suboptimal goals. In some cases, the supply of sport fish opportunity is so great that, as in the case of energy resources, full-fledged recognition of the need for new goals and programmes will only come in response to some combination of real scarcity, reduced quality and the actual impact of the cost of major new maintenance, restoration and enhancement. Reinforcement to this recognition will also come from competing demands on fish and the fishery environment.
To begin with, fishing for sport ranks next only to swimming as the leading form of outdoor recreation in a number of the developed countries for which reasonably comparable data are available, with the percentage of citizens annually participating ranging from ten percent upward.3 In short, when compared with other recreation pursuits, sport fishing is an activity regularly sought after and enjoyed by a substantial percentage of the total population.
The other side of the coin of angling popularity is the continuing growth in population and - until recently - in discretionary incomes, discretionary time, and continuing improvements in means of access. Taken together, the available data show that overall participation is surpassing population growth rates. In a way this is not surprising as sport fishing is one of the best “bargains” of the times and, in common with a number of other forms of recreation, is not overly affected by recession.
It is paradoxical, however, to note that in a world increasingly confronted with hunger that the marketing of sport fishing opportunity may generate the economic margin of actual revenues necessary to justify as well as pay for expensive new fisheries restoration and enhancement programmes which can contribute substantially to world food supplies. Particularly in the case of species capable of large-scale augmentation (e.g., salmon), most sport fish gear is inefficient by definition (i.e., designed to catch one, rather than many fish at a time): most of such sport gear also tends to be incapable of either reaching or cropping annually harvestable runs. Thus sport fisheries “needs” can often be fully met (and their actual take of fish be more than proportionately paid for by “satisfied” anglers) while still leaving as much as ninety percent of the potentially allowable harvest to be commercially cropped for sale as food (i.e., synergism through internalization of external economies).
It is equally paradoxical to note that unless value through sport fisheries use is added to the justification for keeping rivers, lakes and estuaries available for all fisheries production, the fisheries habitat stands in risk of being converted and irreversibly lost because of the spiralling demand for conflicting uses such as hydro power. In the case of salmonids, second best, expensive, and only partially satisfactory sport fisheries measures, like the stocking of headwaters and the trucking of salmon above dams (e.g., the Mactuaquac in New Brunswick) make the commercial fisheries the real loser in any such river-use trade-off (i.e., as a result of purely sport fisheries mitigation measures). Though the specifics of such resource-use trade-offs vary tremendously, there is little room for doubting either man's physical capacity to alter whole river basins or the rapidity with which the whole international perspective on resource use needs and values can be re-aligned. Some of this concern is, for instance, expressed in the United States Fish and Wildlife Service policy study of evaluation where it is noted that “…the Nation is embarking upon what may be the last great wave of resource use decisions, and these affecting natural resources on an unprecedented scale”.4
Conceivably sport fishing could continue to be treated as exempt from market discipline indefinitely except for one thing - cost. Other than in the case of certain sport-caught species which largely cannot or need not be physically protected or augmented (e.g., ocean mackerel, northern pike), most other sport species in developed areas have long since ceased being Nature's free gifts. In addition to rising costs of general administration, most fish now come at a rapidly rising level of cost - either to the licensed angler or general tax-payers. Thus, in the face of increasing angler participation, rising costs of physical supply provision, and protection, and the many constraints on raising user fees, many fisheries managers are confronted with the realization that they must do more with less, or face unavoidable resource supply shortfalls. Whether regarded as an “impediment”, or as measure of the need for and importance of sport fishery evaluation, the conclusion is the same: the costs of the provision and protection of fishing opportunity will continue to climb and will have to be better justified if sport fisheries are to make an optimal contribution. This, however, is the kind of conclusion that begs the central question in this paper, i.e., what are the goal(s) which must be pursued so that fisheries can make an “optimal” contribution?
As noted by Johnson (1970) with respect to the governmental decision-making process, “People tend to think more in terms of problems… than they do in terms of objectives.” Two other observations on the decision-making process are of equal relevance here: first, that “… government programmes are based in the final analysis upon social goals and aspirations”, and second, that while politicians make the final decisions, by means of a “… process or art - probably one of the highest arts of them all”, one should not idealize the political process, for a variety of reasons, including the fact that “the political process is often more intuitive in character than it is scientific”. Recursiveness is also characteristic of the process, as pointed out in the observation that “The objectives of programmes are discovered as much, if not more, from the examination of programmes, as the programmes are discovered through as examination of objectives”.5 It is thus not surprising that Steiner (1970) in a somewhat similar overview of the complexities inherent in the multi-dimensional objective structure of government was led to remark “…the question, ‘what is the public interest?’ has no simple answer. Indeed, asking the question invites the kind of smile reserved for small children and benign idiots”.6
If one accepts, as this writer and many other writers do, that the right to sport fish is just as capable of being treated as a divisible, measurable and marketable economic item as fish in the form of a food commodity, then it becomes appropriate to seek guidance for present sport fisheries purposes from the often complementary if not competitive field of commercial fisheries goal formulation.
The development of an economic basis for commercial fisheries management theory has progressed in two broad stages. The first, reflecting the “problem” orientation noted by Johnson (1970), had its roots in the realization that costs of inputs in open entry fisheries tend to rise until rents are dissipated. While definition of this “problem” stemmed from the work of many - Graham (1940), Scott Gordon (1954), to name two, the basic conclusion in this first stage can perhaps be best summarized in what Graham (1940) calls the “Great Law of Fishing” that “Fisheries that are unlimited become unprofitable”.7 Acceptance of the basic theory is now widespread, and there are many instances of programmes being variously considered and implemented to restrict entry and restore competitively appropriate levels of rationality to commercial fisheries performance. It is also apparent that entry control is not the answer to all fisheries problems.
7 Graham, Michael, 1940, “The Fish Gate”, Faber and Faber Ltd., London, p. 155
The second stage, however, was formally introduced when Copes (1972) moved beyond a primary preoccupation with the various aspects of resource rent maximization and delineated both the other “surpluses” that can be generated and the basic options open to society in the management of commercial fisheries. In essence, Copes pointed out who could benefit, in what ways, by what mix of amounts and at whose expense, from fisheries exploitation. Thus, according to the specifics of the fishery involved, the state may be able to order the market so as to variously generate and/or pass on all or a mix of these “surpluses” as benefits to consumers, producers, or to the resource owners (state or private). Alternatively, in the absence of such an ordering, consumers, producers and owners alike may ultimately suffer according to the effects of overfishing. As illustrated in graphic and tabular form in the Appendix, the framework for the formulation of optimal commercial fisheries management options (and their implications) is essentially defined. In short, rational choices can be identified, weighed and recommended for goal articulation and definition by political decision-makers.
It would be edifying to be able to point to a similar progression in the development of recreational fisheries management theory and practice. Admittedly many of the problems have been recognized, thought of, written about, and even variously acted upon: but the fact essentially remains that there is no generally recognized body of integrated recreational fisheries management theory or understanding. Perhaps Norling in Victoria, British Colombia in 1972 encapsulated the situation best in his seemingly contradictory observation that there have been four stages in the development of theory and management of sport fisheries.8 The first was the period of regulation of the use of natural supply which, under the impact of demand pressures and the development of scientific knowledge and capabilities, led to biological management as the second stage. These two initial stages then led to the social scientists joining in the fray to try to simultaneously develop both a basis for economic management as well as a socially-oriented understanding and/or justification for the provision of angling opportunity. Unfortunately, as Norling pointed out, economists' seeming lack of success in the former task led to economic management of sport fisheries being by-passed in favour of social welfare considerations now forming the fourth and prevailing public policy basis for recreational fisheries management.
When one considers the long and tortuous history of the development of commercial fisheries economic theory (and its operational application), it is not surprising that the exemption of most North American sport fisheries from market pricing (i.e., lack of value data) has been a monumental roadblock to the formulation of comparable economic theory for the management of sport fisheries. Thanks to the problems already mentioned with respect to economic evaluation, the “by-passing” of recreational fisheries management theory was almost inevitable.
But if it is recognized that sport fishing is as inherently an “economic good” within the framework of our system as a frozen fish in a supermarket, it is fruitful to note how closely the basic concepts underlying the two stages of commercial fisheries economic theory can also be applied to sport fishing.
No one can deny that rent maximization can be pragmatically aimed at and variously achieved where there is either or both public and private ownership and marketing of sport fishing: such a denial in Canada, and perhaps also in the United States would be a rejection of the capabilities inherent in our European heritage of laws. In Canada, it would also represent a denial of the unbroken continuation of the ownership and marketing of sport fishing as a private “good” in two provinces of Canada that easily pre-dates Confederation (1867).
And if denied because realistic marketing of the right to sport fish is regarded as abhorrent, or in conflict with the so-called North American tradition of “free access” to resource use, it would be mistakenly endowing “frontier era” beliefs with an immutability long since abandoned with respect to other resources, e.g., no one any longer really expects to get “free” land, the hope of which attracted many generations of settlers to North America.9
Though not yet formally articulated as such, it seems equally the case that excessive numbers of anglers (i.e., overcrowding), can just as surely dissipate “rent potential” (regardless if rents are charged or simulated) and prove destructive to resource supply (and “quality”) of the product as is the case in comparable commercial fisheries. There is also a parallel in public agency remedies to control entry and eliminate “economic waste” in commercial fisheries10 and, for instance, in the broader field of recreation resources, to allocate access to the “maximum number of recreationists an area can handle before site and enjoyment degenerate.”11
Without probing all the nuances and purposes involved, the remedies discussed in the two instances just cited, both include entry limitation (units of commercial gear capacity vs. recreationists' numbers), pricing (licence fees in both instances), and various means of sharing opportunity (commercial fishing quotas vs. recreationists'queueing reservations and lotteries). If the two steps noted in commercial fisheries theory development are retraced, the relevance of Copes' (1972) systematized delineation of the scope for overall goal identification and assessment becomes very evident. Once it is ascertained that there is an effective demand for fishing that can produce benefits (i.e., surpluses) in excess of costs, then it becomes a question for the agencies with responsibilities for the resources involved to quantify those surpluses and to determine the administrative practicality (e.g., revenues in excess of transaction costs) and public policy desirability of their capture and allocation. In short, just as is the case with respect to commercial fisheries options, the question has to be asked: is it anglers (i.e., “producer”-consumers), owners (public or private), the support industry (i.e., secondary beneficiaries), or some combination who should variously pay the bills and enjoy either or both factor returns and the surpluses generated?
Given that many aspects of the adaptation of the generalized framework of commercial fisheries economic theory to recreational fishing are not dealt with here, only one integrative step remains if the basic theory fit suggested in the foregoing is accepted, viz. a theoretically sound basis for incorporating both commercial and sport aspects into a comprehensive, overall theory of fisheries management. Fortunately, the theoretical trade-offs required are relatively straightforward providing net benefit flows can be reasonably proximated, compared and equalized at the margin. Operationally, this is neither new nor of any immediate help, except of course, that the extension of Copes' work into a common framework for assessing and recommending an optimal mix of commercial and sport fishery goals and their attainment does provide a firmer basis for defining and developing other management inputs.
It would of course be illusionary to suggest that the development of an overall framework makes economic simulation of the value of sport fisheries output any easier. Given the oversimplified yet fundamental assertion that sport fishing is worth what anglers individually and citizens collectively are willing to pay, a further fleshing out of a framework for sport fisheries decision-making provides both incentive as well as a discipline for sorting out the management philosophy, machinery and the data systems required for the comprehensive goal-oriented management of specific fisheries. It also provides a more disciplined rationale for identifying what real or proxy values are appropriate in keeping with the goals being pursued.
Myriad factors bear on how recreational fisheries goals can be decided upon and incorporated into the overall context of governmental goals, programmes and policies. There are, however, three aspects that merit special mention.
The first is the seeming permanence of the instructional framework relating to fisheries ownership and laws. Though much of this legislative framework can be traced back to earlier common concerns (e.g., the demarcation of authority respecting fish, navigation, and the implications of waterbed ownership in fresh versus salt water), the specifics of ownership and laws tend to vary tremendously between and even in countries. Bedded into these specifics is a great resistance to change, a resistance which fisheries managers confronted with ongoing operational challenges ultimately tend to accept as a permanent constraint on management innovation and change - especially in waters where more than one jurisdiction and/or level of government is involved.
The second aspect is the somewhat begrudging acceptance by governments of responsibility for coping with the not-to-be-denied leisure and recreation demands. Neither the underlying forces nor the problems associated with these demands (e.g., lack of definitions, uncertainty regarding the role of government) need to be dealt with here. It suffices to say that fisheries managers starting to manage sport fishing so as to optimize and allocate benefits can be confronted with real problems where they have to operate on the basis of historically commercial fisheries-oriented laws and institutional arrangements. The management aspect of the dilemma is perhaps best defined by Drucker (1974) in his observation that, “A business is not defined by the company's name, statutes, or articles of incorporation. It is defined by what the customer's needs are when he buys a product or service.” Specifically, Drucker makes the point earlier - “With respect to the definition of business purpose and business mission, there is only one such focus, one starting point. It is the customer. The customer defines the business.”12 The implications are clear: the costs of adapting institutions to serve management needs must be incorporated into the weighing of alternatives and the decisions made respecting the goals to be sought.
The third aspect is inextricably intertwined with the previous two. Neither the acceptance of new (or more completely delineated) fisheries goals nor the changing of institutional relationships to serve those goals, is readily possible without public understanding, acceptance and support. Though the matter can be dealt with in many ways the provision of full information to the public has to be regarded as the ideal situation.13 But at the outset, there are several reasons why action on this has to be tempered. A necessary condition for any real progress in the identification and formulation of sport fisheries goals is acceptance by fisheries managers, experts and analysts of the need for change. This, for instance, may actually mean that instead of concentrating on the future, the first step will be to develop and use input-output models designed to reveal how, and how well existing fisheries are performing in terms of net pay-offs.
The second step can then very well be a ranking of fisheries, and fisheries issues, so as to establish priorities in the development and provision of data to the public which is future goal-oriented, relevant and understandable. Understandability involves more than numbers however. The various uses of the word value have to be explained. Thought also has to be given to how both the awareness and responsibilities associated with the public ownership can be brought into focus. A problem exists in the form of a dilution of this responsibility (in numbers equivalence if not in principle) because, as noted in respect to the analyses of water resources in the United States, “water resource projects bring enormous economic benefits to specific regions, and commensurate political benefits to their political sponsors, while the costs are spread thinly among taxpayers as a whole”.14 Data also needs to be provided to relate to and build upon areas of the current discussion of optimum sustainable yield.15 Fortunately, when it comes to informing the public, organized sport fishermen are among the most broadly representative, dedicated and certainly the longest established consumer advocates that can be found. Given dialogue that leads to general concurrence with management goals, organized anglers can carry a significant share of the task of explaining issues to the public and bringing about acceptance of the case for the better management of fisheries and the fisheries environment.
In the opinion of this writer, Copes' work has extended commercial fisheries theory development to its logical multidimensional scope. Thus, a framework is now available in which basic choices relating to commercial fisheries benefit generation and allocation can be identified and reasonably approximated. Actual decisions can, of course, represent any combination in keeping with the specifics of the fishery in question.
As outlined in this paper, Copes' framework for goal identification can be applied equally to recreational fisheries once it is recognized that the value of the right to sport fish can be established for management purposes either in the market or through simulation. In essence, economic rents, for instance, can be variously “dissipated”, captured and allocated according to the specifics of the fishery in question and the management goals and machinery applied. The framework applies equally to cases where the decision is to maximize consumer benefits through the provision of fishing as a social welfare service.
As sport and commercial value flows can be variously developed and compared, it follows that the application of Copes' framework now provides a comprehensive theoretical basis for the integrated management of both sport and commercial fisheries. In short, there is now an objective basis for determining how sport and commercial fisheries could be managed so as to optimize the generation and allocation of net yields.
The availability of a comprehensive theoretical framework should lead to substantially increased objectivity in the identification and weighing of management options. Similarly while it must be recognized that many problems are as intransigent as ever (e.g., economic evaluation), the presence of a logical goal framework will serve to better define not only the data and data systems required for purposive management but also the methods used and many of the characteristics and limits relating to proxy figures which may be needed and developed.
Finally, the availability and fuller articulation of comprehensive theory imposes an analytical discipline not only on fisheries experts and analysts. Fisheries managers and ultimately political decision-makers, will also be confronted with the need to be able to fully understand and, where appropriate, to explain the rationality of ensuing conclusions, recommendations, decisions and programmes.
The comments and criticisms of Professor Parzival Copes and Mr. Ian D. Thomson were very much appreciated. All shortcomings in the paper are the sole responsibility of the author.
Copes, Parzival, 1972 “Factor Rents, Sole Ownership and the Optimum Level of Fisheries Exploitation”, The Manchester School University of Manchester, Manchester U.K. June edition 1972, pp. 145–63
Gordon, H. Scott, 1953 “An Economic Approach to the Economic Utilization of Fishery Resources”, Journal of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada, Ottawa 10(7) 1953
Graham, Michael, 1940 “The Fish Gate”, Faber and Faber Ltd., London, 196 p.
Johnson, A.W., 1974 “PPB and Decision-Making in the Government of Canada”, Mimeo of address to 50th Anniversary Conference, Society of Industrial Accountants, Toronto, Canada, 14 p.
Steiner, Peter O., 1969 “The Public Sector and the Public Interest”, 91st Congress Compendium of papers on The Analysis and Evaluation of Public Expenditures: The PPB System. U.S. Government Printing Office, Vol. 1., 610 p.
Strumpel, Burkhard, 1972 “Economic Life-Styles, Values and Subjective Welfare - An Empirical Approach”, Family Economic Behavior, J.B. Lippincott Company, pp. 69–124
Table 1
Characteristics of Equilibrium Levels of Output and Price for Different Forms of Fisheries Management
| Market organization | Categories of benefits maximized | Incidental social benefits | Social benefits eliminated | Relation to socially optimum output | Relation of consumers' price to social optimum | Relation to socially optimum level of effort | |
| (a) | Free entry and free market | Consumers' surplus and producers' surplus | Resource rent | Indeterminate | Indeterminate | Overfishing | |
| (b) | State control | Combined total of consumers' surplus, resource rent and producers' surplus | Optimal | Optimal | Optimal | ||
| (c) | Consumers' monopsony | Combined total of consumers' surplus and resource rent | Producers' surplus | Below optimum | Above optimum | Underfishing | |
| (d) | Producers' monopoly | Combined total of producers' surplus and resource rent | Consumers' surplus | Below optimum | Above optimum | Underfishing | |
| (e) | Resource owners' monopoly | Resource rent | Consumers' surplus and producers' surplus | Below optimum | Above optimum | Underfishing | |
APPENDIX1
