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International Agreements in the Multispecies Baltic Sea Fisheries

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Abstract

This study analyses a multispecies (cod, herring and sprat) partition function game among three asymmetric countries in the Baltic Sea. Through an empirical application, the study highlights the importance of dynamic multispecies models in coalition formation. We show that the grand coalition between the three countries can be stabilised when the most efficient country compensates the other countries. This solution is not feasible when using a single-species model for the cod population; thus, taking into account the multispecies nature of the Baltic Sea fisheries, the scope of cooperation increases compared with a single-species simulation. In contrast to the predominant conception, climate change may improve the likelihood of a binding agreement because with a lower cod biomass, countries will gain more from cooperation.

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Notes

  1. However, as the problem in Poland likely lies in the incapability of enforcement and monitoring, side payments as such may not solve the dilemma unless they are directed to strengthening enforcement. Examining this issue further in the current paper would require enlarging the model to include the enforcement level, as done by, e.g., Kronbak and Lindroos (2006), who assessed how the level of enforcement affects coalition formation. However, this type of extension would make our model unreasonably complex and lead it partly away from its original objective. We gratefully acknowledge an anonymous reviewer for noting this issue.

  2. Age class 2 consists of individuals aged 1–2 years, age group 3 consists of individuals aged 2–3 years, and so on.

  3. Subscript c refers to cod throughout the study.

  4. Subscripts h and s refer to herring and sprat, respectively, throughout the study.

  5. The website for the supplementary data is: https://datacollection.jrc.ec.europa.eu/.

  6. All prices and cost parameters are converted into 2013 euros and can be found in the “Appendix”.

  7. In this paper, the approach used by, e.g., Rubio and Casino (2005) is followed, although some other studies rely on a dynamic membership game where the players can revise their membership decision periodically. According to Rubio and Ulph (2007), a dynamic membership game leads to an increasing number of countries in the agreement over time and results in higher welfare with a wide range of parameters; thus, it may be important to allow a revision in the membership over time. We acknowledge an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

  8. We gratefully acknowledge an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

  9. This is assumption is made to enable a comparison between the current and simulated fisheries. These current fishing mortalities represent each country’s actual fishing mortality and a share (based on the relative share of the catches) of the fishing mortalities of the remaining countries.

  10. The objective function is now separated for each species; for example, for the cod fishery under a grand coalition, previous Eq. (14) is \(\textit{NPV}_{GC,c} =\max _{F_{i,c}} \sum _{t=1}^{50}{\sum _{i=1}^3{\frac{Q_{i,c}\left( t \right) -C_{i,c}\left( t\right) }{\left( {1+r_i}\right) ^{t-1}}}}\). The cost function of herring and sprat is split between the two fisheries.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, which helped us to improve the manuscript. This paper is a deliverable of the Nordic Centre for Research on Marine Ecosystems and Resources under Climate Change (NorMER), which is funded by the Norden Top-level Research Initiative sub-programme ‘Effect Studies and Adaptation to Climate Change.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics and Management, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 27, 00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Emmi Nieminen & Marko Lindroos

  2. Department of Business and Economics, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

    Lone Grønbæk Kronbak

Authors
  1. Emmi Nieminen
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  2. Lone Grønbæk Kronbak
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  3. Marko Lindroos
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Emmi Nieminen.

Appendix

Appendix

See the Tables 10, 11, 12 and 13.

Table 10 Biological and economic parameter values
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Table 11 Initial values of cod population dynamics
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Table 12 Initial values of herring population dynamics
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Table 13 Initial values of sprat population dynamics
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Nieminen, E., Kronbak, L.G. & Lindroos, M. International Agreements in the Multispecies Baltic Sea Fisheries. Environ Resource Econ 65, 109–134 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-015-9933-x

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