IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/enreec/v82y2022i3d10.1007_s10640-022-00688-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Fisheries Management in Congested Waters: A Game-Theoretic Assessment of the East China Sea

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Perry

    (George Mason University)

Abstract

Fisheries in the East China Sea (ECS) face multiple concerning trends. Aside from depleted stocks caused by overfishing, illegal encroachments by fishermen from one nation into another’s legal waters are a common occurrence. This behavior presumably could be stopped via strong monitoring, controls, and surveillance (MCS), but MCS is routinely rated as below standards for nations bordering the ECS. This paper generalizes the ECS to a model of a congested maritime environment, defined as an environment where multiple nations can fish in the same waters with equivalent operating costs, and uses game-theoretic analysis to explain why the observed behavior persists in the ECS. The paper finds that nations in congested environments are incentivized to issue excessive quotas, which in turn tacitly encourages illegal fishing and extracts illegal rent from another’s legal waters. This behavior couldn’t persist in the face of strong MCS measures, and states are thus likewise incentivized to use poor MCS. A bargaining problem is analyzed to complement the noncooperative game, and a key finding is the nation with lower nonoperating costs has great leverage during the bargain.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Perry, 2022. "Fisheries Management in Congested Waters: A Game-Theoretic Assessment of the East China Sea," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 82(3), pages 717-740, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:enreec:v:82:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s10640-022-00688-9
    DOI: 10.1007/s10640-022-00688-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10640-022-00688-9
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10640-022-00688-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. King, Dennis M. & Sutinen, Jon G., 2010. "Rational noncompliance and the liquidation of Northeast groundfish resources," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 7-21, January.
    2. Raakjær Nielsen, Jesper & Mathiesen, Christoph, 2003. "Important factors influencing rule compliance in fisheries lessons from Denmark," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 27(5), pages 409-416, September.
    3. Miller, Steve & Nkuiya, Bruno, 2016. "Coalition formation in fisheries with potential regime shift," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 189-207.
    4. H. Scott Gordon, 1954. "The Economic Theory of a Common-Property Resource: The Fishery," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Chennat Gopalakrishnan (ed.), Classic Papers in Natural Resource Economics, chapter 9, pages 178-203, Palgrave Macmillan.
    5. Fischer, Ronald D. & Mirman, Leonard J., 1996. "The Compleat Fish Wars: Biological and Dynamic Interactions," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 34-42, January.
    6. Stefan Borsky & Paul A. Raschky, 2011. "A Spatial Econometric Analysis of Compliance with an International Environmental Agreement on Open Access Resources," Working Papers 2011-10, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    7. Clark,Colin W., 2007. "The Worldwide Crisis in Fisheries," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521549394.
    8. Leyuan Shi & Sigurdur Ólafsson, 2000. "Nested Partitions Method for Global Optimization," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 48(3), pages 390-407, June.
    9. Lone Grønbæk & Marko Lindroos & Gordon Munro & Pedro Pintassilgo, 2020. "Game Theory and Fisheries Management," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-030-40112-2, June.
    10. Clark,Colin W., 2007. "The Worldwide Crisis in Fisheries," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521840057.
    11. H. Scott Gordon, 1954. "The Economic Theory of a Common-Property Resource: The Fishery," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 62(2), pages 124-124.
    12. Tracey Mangin & Christopher Costello & James Anderson & Ragnar Arnason & Matthew Elliott & Steve D Gaines & Ray Hilborn & Emily Peterson & Rashid Sumaila, 2018. "Are fishery management upgrades worth the cost?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(9), pages 1-24, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michael Macgregor Perry, 2021. "Fisheries Management in Congested Waters: A Game-Theoretic Assessment of the East China Sea," Papers 2110.13966, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2022.
    2. Christian Mullon & Charles Mullon, 2016. "A constraint-based framework to study rationality, competition and cooperation in fisheries," Papers 1605.08166, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2017.
    3. Manuel Pacheco Coelho & José António Filipe, 2021. "Searching for a New Model of Governance in the High Seas: Game Theory Applied to International Commons Management," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(19), pages 1-28, October.
    4. Rabah Amir & Niels Nannerup, 2006. "Information Structure and the Tragedy of the Commons in Resource Extraction," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 147-165, August.
    5. Emmi Nieminen & Lone Grønbæk Kronbak & Marko Lindroos, 2016. "International Agreements in the Multispecies Baltic Sea Fisheries," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 65(1), pages 109-134, September.
    6. Michael Macgregor Perry, 2021. "Analyzing a Complex Game for the South China Sea Fishing Dispute using Response Surface Methodologies," Papers 2110.12568, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2021.
    7. Sébastien Rouillon, 2012. "Decentralized Management of a Fishery," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 52(2), pages 181-193, June.
    8. Ben White, 2000. "A Review of the Economics of Biological Natural Resources," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(3), pages 419-462, September.
    9. J. Barkin & Elizabeth DeSombre, 2013. "Do we need a global fisheries management organization?," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 3(2), pages 232-242, June.
    10. Wilen, James E., 2000. "Renewable Resource Economists and Policy: What Differences Have We Made?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 306-327, May.
    11. Lone Grønbæk, 2000. "Fishery Economics and Game Theory," Working Papers 14/00, University of Southern Denmark, Department of Sociology, Environmental and Business Economics.
    12. Anastasios Xepapadeas, 2003. "Regulation and Evolution of Harvesting Rules and Compliance in Common Pool Resources," Economic Working Papers at Centro de Estudios Andaluces E2003/39, Centro de Estudios Andaluces.
    13. Anastasios Xepapadeas, 2005. "Regulation and Evolution of Compliance in Common Pool Resources," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 107(3), pages 583-599, September.
    14. Michael Finus & Raoul Schneider & Pedro Pintassilgo, 2019. "The Role of Social and Technical Excludability for the Success of Impure Public Good and Common Pool Agreements: The Case of International Fisheries," Graz Economics Papers 2019-12, University of Graz, Department of Economics.
    15. Datta, Manjira & Mirman, Leonard J., 1999. "Externalities, Market Power, and Resource Extraction," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 233-255, May.
    16. Guillaume Bataille & Benteng Zou, 2024. "International Fisheries Agreements: Endogenous Exits, Shapley Values, and Moratorium Fishing Policy," AMSE Working Papers 2421, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    17. Guillaume Bataille & Benteng Zou, 2024. "International Fisheries Agreements: Endogenous Exits, Shapley Values, and Moratorium Fishing Policy," DEM Discussion Paper Series 24-06, Department of Economics at the University of Luxembourg.
    18. Haavio, Markus, 2005. "Transboundary pollution and household mobility: Are they equivalent?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 252-275, September.
    19. BALESTRA, Carlotta & BRECHET, Thierry & LAMBRECHT, Stéphane, 2010. "Property rights with biological spillovers: when Hardin meets Meade," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2010071, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    20. Bergland, Harald & Clark, Derek J. & Pedersen, Pal Andreas, 2002. "Rent-seeking and quota regulation of a renewable resource," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 263-279, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:enreec:v:82:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s10640-022-00688-9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.