Differences of profitability within a multi-species multi-gear fishery:
How much is explained by barriers to entry?
By Bertrand Le Gallic
ABSTRACT
The fishing activities within the English Channel may be regarded as various components of one large multi-species multi-gear fishery. As a result of a bioeconomic analysis of this fishery, significant differences of profitability between activities were outlined. According to industrial economics, such differences may be regarded as the result of barriers to entry limiting the access to the most profitable activities. The aim of this paper is to determine which part of the differences of profitability outlined in the survey can be explained by usual barriers to entry (geographical, technical, institutional, informational), and which part should be attributed to other factors, such as non monetary arguments of the utility function of producers. It is based on a socio-economic survey of 160 French fishermen realised for a European funded project. The interest of this analysis is both theoretical and practical: on one side, it intends to provide some new evidences in the debate concerning the economic rationality of fishermen; on the other side, it helps to identify the range of remote constraints fishery management has to cope with.
KEYWORDS: barriers to entry, economic behaviour, fishing effort allocation,
English Channel fishery
 View Fishing Behavior and Institutions Session
View Full Paper (PDF file)
|
