Distributional issues in the operation of rights-based fisheries management systems

Rights-based management regimes are considered by economists as an importan t solution to the problems of excess capacity and biological over-harvestin g of fisheries. In practice, adoption of such regimes, and particularly of those relying on individual quota allocations, has often met with resistanc e from within the fisheries concerned. A key reason for this resistance app ears to be the distributional conflicts which arise in the process of imple menting the regimes. An economic analysis of the nature of these conflicts in the different contexts in which they have been observed is proposed. The approach centres on the way in which distributional conflicts can influenc e the operation of management systems and their impacts on fisheries, from the country to the individual firm level. As an illustration, an analysis o f the economic processes at firm level is developed based on the simulation of a fishery managed under individual transferable quotas. (C) 2001 Elsevi er Science Ltd. All rights reserved.