Maximum Social Returns for Canada's Pacific Halibut Fishery

Abstract

Abstract Until 1981, Canadian and American vessels in the Pacific halibut fishery had shared the same fishing grounds for over 50 years. Since 1981, enforcement of the 200-mi fishing limit by the USA has excluded Canadian vessels from the more extensive and productive U.S. waters. The Canadian fleet is now limited to smaller catches, but more effective economic resource management is now possible because the fleet can be rationalized to generate much greater net economic benefits. In a bioeconomic analysis of this fishery, it was determined that intramarginal rents (returns to fishing effort) accrue to the more efficient vessel operators in the fishery. It is not possible to determine this characteristic in most bioeconomic analyses of fisheries due to a lack of data, and as a result, most of these assessments are concerned solely with the allocation of resource rent (returns to the fish stock). In this paper, I consider the allocation of both resource and intramarginal rent together with consumer surplus...