Vessel Buybacks in Fisheries: The Role of Auction and Financing Structures

Graff Zivin, J and J Mullins, “Vessel Buybacks in Fisheries: The Role of Auction and Financing Structures,” Marine Policy, 53(2015) 188–197.

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Vessel buyback programs intended to address overcapacity and excess capitalization in fisheries can lead to dramatically different levels of decapitalization depending on program structure and availability of vessel-specific information. This paper develops a simple theoretical model of self-financing vessel buybacks to examine equilibrium outcomes using sequential versus take-it-or-leave-it auctions, and financing schemes which allocate costs either homogeneously or according to rents captured through the buyback. This model demonstrates that programs which spread costs evenly among remaining vessels limit the possible extent of buybacks, as do programs which buy vessels one at a time in sequence rather than all at once. In addition to the theoretical modeling, a stylized case study inspired by the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Fishery is also provided. This analysis suggests that a wide range of auction structures could roughly half the size of the existing fleet, and starkly demonstrates how information poor settings can entirely derail a buyback.