Community Transferable Quotas: Internalizing Externalities and Minimizing Social Impacts of Fisheries Management

Ongoing changes in world fisheries, including those in the United States, are having dramatic impacts on fishers, their families, and their communities. The key drivers of these changes have been identified as open access and overcapitalization. The prevailing models being considered for addressing these issues are firmly rooted in the tenets of neoclassical economic theory and focus on establishing property rights or privileges in fisheries. The National Research Council has recently recommended that Congress lift the moratorium on the development of individual fishing quota (IFQ) programs established by the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996. In particular, among mainstream managers, a particular form of IFQ, the individual transferable quota (ITQ) has come to be viewed as the management tool of choice. ITQs, quasiprivatized property rights allocated to individual fishers, are expected to