Introduction to Non-cooperative Fisheries Games

The purpose of the current chapter is to introduce basic non-cooperative fisheries games. In non-cooperative games, players act competitively and choose best responses to the actions of the other players. The chapter starts with a classic static game in which players use one-shot strategies. This game illustrates, among other things, the fact that a large number of players competing for a fish stock can have grave consequences for the stock level and the resource rent. Then, another classic game is presented: a dynamic game with feedback strategies. This game demonstrates that themost efficient players tend to harvest the stock down to a level where it ceases to be in the best interests of the other players to remain in the fishery. The chapter concludes with a case study on the South Tasman Rise trawl fishery, which illustrates the fact that the outcomes of non-cooperation may be severe. A game in which commitments (agreements, promises, threats) are not enforceable is defined as non-cooperative (see Definition 2.5). This implies that each player acts independently of the others. As shown in Chap. 2, non-cooperative games can be divided into static and dynamic games. A static game is by definition timeless, and will be seen in our case to be one in which certain constraints are imposed. In a dynamic game, time is taken into account explicitly, and the aforementioned constraints are not imposed. This chapter presents two classic non-cooperative fisheries games, one static and another dynamic, which have been widely used in the fisheries economics literature.