Collective Share Quotas and the Role of Fishermen’s Organizations in Ex-Vessel Price Determination

AbstractThis article examines the collective bargaining efforts of atomized fishermen with a monopsony-like buying sector. Government allocation of collective share quotas to fishermen’s organizations triggered the voluntary formation of cooperative fishermen’s bargaining associations, while a highly concentrated processing sector started behaving as a countervailing monopsony. This drove ex-vessel price determination into region-specific bilateral monopoly price bargaining. We estimate an empirical model of regional ex-vessel price determination, taking advantage of between-region regulatory differences to identify the differential effects on ex-vessel prices. Our model estimates the overall impact on regional ex-vessel prices from this process of institutional change. Our results show evidence of higher, policy-shift driven, ex-vessel prices at only one of the regions studied. This region had more favorable conditions for collective action and is where fishermen were able to achieve more stable, better ...