How much to charge? Modeling conflicts in fisheries

Abstract

Over the last two decades, fisheries sector has been playing an important role in the global economy as a vibrant sector. By looking into the interactions among natural resources, human beings and government, this paper first brief examines the issue of complicated conflicts in fisheries together with its influence on fisheries management. Under the assumption that the fishing resources will not be exhausted, this paper further reveals the particular conflicts between economic performance and community welfare by modeling the strategic interaction amongst the government and fishing firms based on the two stage non-cooperative game theory. With two static models and one dynamic model enclosed, this paper demonstrates with how government establishes the fishing fee rate to achieve its primary goal and how the fishing firms react to the policy in each scenario and concludes with some brief suggestions regarding policy-making for the Chinese government. In the end, it considers the implications of the models and future work priorities.