Ownership of Renewable Ocean Resources

Much of the recent fisheries economics literature promotes usufructuary rights policies to lessen the dissipation of resource rents. However, this literature does not count institutional inefficiencies which result from rentseeking and the principal-agent problem when a centralized government controls access to renewable ocean resources. As a result, the efficiency of usufructuary rights programs, including ITQs, throughout the economy could be exaggerated. From a dynamic standpoint, though, usufructuary rights policies remain an important avenue for residual claimants to contract for less attenuated institutions of common or private property rights. These conclusions are drawn from a survey of the property rights and public choice literatures.