A friend recently gave me a book of Gary S Becker “the Economics of Life”.
They are a collection of his articles in Business Week.
The late Professor Becker, a Noble Prize winner for Economics, nearly turned down the opportunity to write the column for Businessweek. I am glad he did not.
I’ve been working on fisheries for a long time and most of the solutions I read about, from quota management, effort management to MSY and MEY, all lack a certain clarity and simplicity to them.
Professor Becker offers an alternative. Taxation. In this article he offered a simple and seemingly very practical way to address overfishing.
Why not just tax the amount of fish caught.
Small and young fish can be taxed very severely. Fishermen would likely change their fishing habits as soon as it cost them too much to catch the fish with heavy taxes on their catch.
The size of the tax would control the total catch. Fishing is going to decrease when the tax rate is higher.
Tax rates could vary depending on the season, such as spawning season, and reflecting the amount of fish caught to date. Fishermen are less likely to go out fishing and risk overfishing when the tax on that catch could be made very expensive.
It has the advantage that it does not discriminate. Recreational and commercial fishermen all catch fish and for each fish they catch they can pay.
The system is no more complex than today’s quota system in monitoring. The technology is there to make this effective. CCTV would, like with truck drivers, help ensure compliance.
And, tax authorities have usually been tough on enforcement.
Fortunately, there is nothing to stop any government in Europe trying this out.