The mixed blessing of more modern fishing technology

This paper formulates a simple biomass growth model of a fishery. The property rights regime is of the unregulated local common property type with a fixed number of fishermen and where the fish stock is exploited in a myopic profit-maximizing manner. Within this resource management setting it is demonstrated that more modern fishing technology has a two-sided profitability effect, and where the direct, short-run, positive effect is counterbalanced by a negative, long-run, indirect effect that slows down the stock growth and increases the harvesting costs. In the steady state, it is shown that more modern technology dissipates the rent under already high exploitation pressure, while the opposite occurs if the fish stock is initially little, or moderately, exploited. This is the mixed blessing of modern fishing technology.