Conventional wisdom holds that maintaining a high resource
stock reduces harvesting costs, but this motivation fails with
technical change, and a stock smaller than MSY may maximize
economic rents. Technical change also exacerbates the “tragedy of
the commons”, means that an open-access bionomic equilibrium
no longer applies, and shrinks the difference between rentmaximizing
and open access stocks. Both perspectives invite
reinterpreting fisheries policy. As long as sustainability is assured,
stocks less than MSY may no longer indicate economic overharvesting,
but rather technological innovation, and the difference
may not be sizeable. Technical change and the identification of
simple rent maximizing stocks as less than MSY and the absence of
a steady-state equilibrium give all the more impetus to ecosystem
based fisheries management.
The economically optimum amount of bycatch is not zero, and
at some level of bycatch reduction, the marginal costs of bycatch
reduction outweigh the marginal benefits. The question becomes
how to cost-effectively reduce bycatch. Bycatch reduction policies
are limited that focus upon traditional command-and-control
measures such as time and area closures and effort reductions or
simple technology standards, such as gear and equipment mandates,
that freeze technology in place. Instead, optimal policies
recognize the induced and biased nature of the required bycatch