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Middlemen: good for resources and fishermen?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2019

Phạm Thị Thanh Thủy ,
Ola Flaaten  and
Anders Skonhoft
Phạm Thị Thanh Thủy*
Affiliation:
Norwegian College of Fishery Science, University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway Faculty of Economics, University of Nha Trang, Khánh Hòa, Vietnam
Ola Flaaten
Affiliation:
Norwegian College of Fishery Science, University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway
Anders Skonhoft
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper studies the role of middlemen in open-access fisheries and how the organization of the supply chains affects resource exploitation and the level and distribution of economic rent. Imperfect competition among middlemen can help ensure that fish stocks are not depleted, which is typically the case in open-access fisheries with competitive markets. Middlemen with market power can also induce higher economic rent for the supply chain in total, but these rents mainly benefit the middlemen. The supply chains of inshore anchovy and offshore skipjack tuna fisheries in Vietnam are used as empirical examples. The analysis shows that in the anchovy supply chain, the middlemen have insignificant market power and the stock is being overexploited. In the skipjack tuna supply chain, the middlemen have oligopsony power and the stock is higher than the level that produces maximum sustainable yield.

Keywords

economic rentmarket powermiddlemenopen access fisheryprices
Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 24 , Issue 5 , October 2019 , pp. 437 - 456
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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