The Impact of Open Access to Fishing Grounds: The History of Jens Warming's Model

Abstract

The paper examines the Dane Jens Warming's published and unpublished works on fisheries economics from the period 1911–38. In 1911 Warming published a highly original article on the problems of open access to a common property resource. The article contains the same results as H. Scott Gordon presented in his seminal article on fisheries economics from 1954. Warming frequently returned to his model later in life. The reason for doing so was that the model not only dealt with an important aspect of fisheries management but also illustrated a more general problem relating to the functioning of a competitive economy. Special attention is drawn to an unpublished manuscript from 1926, which includes Warming's own English presentation of a new version of the model. The new model became the main ingredient in a new article on fishery from 1931 and was included in the sections on fishery in Warming's textbooks on the Danish society published in 1929 and 1938. The paper draws attention to Warming's efforts to make his contemporaries take an interest in his publications. New findings in the archives indicate that Warming attempted to make Scandinavian marine biologists aware of his views on fisheries economics from the very outset.