Cooperation and Club Goods: Fisheries Management in the Spirit of Elinor Ostrom

The challenge of achieving stable fisheries cooperative arrangements worldwide, at both the international and the domestic level, is increasingly important, but most game theoretic analyses of such arrangements have produced pessimistic results. Yet Elinor Ostrom and colleagues, emphasizing what might be termed social capital, refute these pessimistic results, at least at the domestic level. To date, there has been no effective way of incorporating such social capital into game theoretic models of fisheries. Focusing on the domestic level, this paper attempts to do just that. In so doing, the paper employs the concept of “club goods,” where a club good is non-rivalrous, but excludable. The paper, commencing with a model involving a repeated game with trigger strategies, is extended to include the club good, with dramatic consequences for the stability of the game. Elinor Ostrom and colleagues stand vindicated. Extending this analysis to the international level is the next challenge.