Effects of the Share Remuneration System on Fisheries Management Targets and Rent Distribution

Abstract

A B S T R A C TMost fisheries worldwide remunerate their crew with a share system, where crew receive a part of the revenues or a part of the revenues less costs, rather than a fixed wage. Although labor is one of the main costs in fisheries and the share remuneration system has a strong influence on firm behavior and its economic performance, little attention has been paid it. In a share remuneration system, crew salaries can significantly increase when the economic performance of a vessel improves. This allows the crew to capture part of the fisheries rent. Bioeconomic analyses are performed for the Bay of Biscay nephrops fishery on main management targets. Results confirm the importance of considering a share system compared to a fixed remuneration system in vessel owner (capital) and crew (labor) rent distribution and fishing decisions.

Integrated ecological–economic fisheries models—Evaluation, review and challenges for implementation

“…Macher, Guyader, Talidec, & Bertignac, 2008;Macher et al, 2013;Merzéréaud, Biais, Lissardy, Bertignac, & Biseau, 2013;Merzéréaud et al, 2011;Simmonds et al, 2011;Raveau et al, 2012;Guillén et al, 2013;Guillén, Macher, Merzéréaud, Fifas, & Guyader, 2014;Guillén, Macher, Merzéréaud, Boncoeur, & Guyader, 2015;EU STECF, 2015a,b,c. 15 SIMFISH Bartelings, Hamon, Berkenhagen, & Buisman, 2015Kempf et al, 2016.…”

Remuneration systems used in the fishing sector and their consequences on crew wages and labor rent creation

“…Similar results were obtained for the Bay of Biscay nephrops fishery where crew members receive a shared salary as in case 3. Guillen et al (2015) estimated that if In shared remuneration systems, labor costs are independent of the crew number, and consequently the average wage depends on the crew number. While in fixed remuneration systems, the average wage is fixed (constant), and so labor costs are proportional to the crew number.…”

“…In other words, the bioeconomic equilibrium is reached at a higher fishing effort level for the fixed remuneration. However, in Guillen et al, (2015), fixed remuneration was found to be more conservative, mainly as a result of the initial value given to the opportunity cost of labor:…”

“…Moreover, in addition to the principal-agent problem where captains may have incentives to apply a different fishing effort depending if they are the owners of the vessels or not, in order to maximize their personal income (Eisenhardt 1989;Vestergaard 2010); the use of different remuneration systems leads to different fishing efforts in order to achieve the management objectives independently of the presence of the vessel owner (Guillen et al 2015).…”

“…Fisheries rent is a "surplus" from the exploitation of fisheries resources. It is estimated as the difference between total revenues obtained from the fishery and the total costs (estimated at their opportunity costs) of employing the various factors of production (including charges for replacement of assets) that together make up the firms participating in the fishery (Guillen et al 2015).…”