Non-Cooperation in Fish Exploitation. The Case of Irreversible Capital Investment in the Arcto-Norwegian Cod Fishery

Abstract

A two-stage, two-player non-cooperative game model is developed under an irreversible capital investment assumption. The main aim is to predict the number of vessels that each player in such a game will find in his best interest to employ in the exploitation of the Arcto-Norwegian cod stock, given a non-cooperative environment and the fact that all players are jointly constrained by the population dynamics of the resource. The predictions obtained are then compared with (i) the sole owner's optimal capacity investments for the two players; (ii) the results in Sumaila (1994), where perfect malleabilty of c ap aci t y is assumed implicitly; and (iii) available data on the Arcto-Norwegian cod fishery.