The impact of transferable fishing quotas on cost, price, and season length

Individual fishing quotas give fishers incentives to reduce costs (or increase productivity), lengthen the harvest season and increase price by improving catch quality. To what extent each of these three effects will be present when the management system is changed in a specific fishery depends on the characteristics of the fishery and on the markets and supply chains served. This paper uses a difference-in-differences approach to investigate the impact on all three outcomes of a regulatory change that introduced individual fishing quotas with some transferability for a group of coastal vessels in the Norwegian whitefish fisheries. The results indicate higher ex-vessel prices after the regulatory change, which imply higher quality of the fish landed, but show no significant extension of the fishing season or reduction of the average cost.