Management of a Cooperative Fishery With Cyclic Environmental Shocks

Previous work has examined optimal fisheries management in idealized institutional contexts, as well as the effectiveness of real institutions in improving the efficiency of the fishery, but there remain further connections to be made between these literatures. Fishing cooperatives have been advocated as a community-based institution that can successfully manage resources where top-down management schemes are ineffective. We expand upon previous studies that have examined cooperatives’ allocation of harvest within a fishing season, and ask whether a cooperative conforms to the patterns of optimal harvesting management across seasons, particularly in its ability to respond to a predicted cyclic fluctuation in the fish stock, such as those caused be El Niño cycles. We find that optimal harvesting by a cooperative involves setting price to cycle in phase with the cycle of stock growth, but only when the cooperative is unaffected by externalities. Data from fishing cooperatives in Baja California, Mexico provide support for this hypothesis.