| Summary: | A formal economic analysis of the discarding problem is presented, focusing on the individual fisherman and the effect of different regulations on the fisherman's incentives to discard. It is shown that in a nonregulated fishery, either multispecies or single species/multisize, where the only constraints are the hold capacity and the length of the season, the fisherman may have rational incentives to discard/highgrade, if the marginal trip profit of an extra fishing day is greater than the average trip profit. Regulation by TAC does not change the incentives to discard. However, under INTQs and ITOs, the incentives to discard increase. The incentives to discard decrease under ITQs compared to INTQs, if the unit quota price is smaller than the shadow price of the quota. The model is applied to the Greenland shrimp fishery, where it demonstrates the reported discard behavior in the fishery. Finally, different regulations of discard are applied and discussed in the model. The analysis suggests that regulation of fishing days could be a promising alternative to usual suggested measures like tax/subsidies and landings obligations.
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