MARINE RESOURCES
Fisheries are a classic common pool resource. The lack of well-defined property rights means that many marine species are fished unsustainably and inefficiently. Managing some of these marine resources is further complicated by the migration of fish stocks across national boundaries and between national waters and the high seas.
In the early 1970s, Resources for the Future researcher Francis Christy developed the idea of a rights-based fishing paradigm as way to resolve these problems, resulting in one of the major innovations in fisheries management, individual tradable quotas (ITQs). Recent RFF research has evaluated the performance of ITQ programs, quota trading markets, effects of ITQs on distributional outcomes between fishers and processors, the impacts of no-take areas on fisheries and marine biodiversity, and the potential for creating negotiated fishing "zones" in the world's seas.