Managing a Natural Asset That Is Both a Value and a Nuisance: Competition versus Cooperation for the Barents Sea Red King Crab

Abstract

We develop a bioeconomic model for the management of the Barents Sea red king crab (RKC) fishery, which is a shared stock between Russia and Norway. The RKC is a well-established invasive species in the southern Barents Sea that has evolved into a very profitable fishery over the past two decades. The trade-off that resource managers face today is complicated by the many persisting ecological, biological, and economic uncertainties. We provide analytical solutions that demonstrate the existing trade-offs as well as a numerical analysis of the crab’s management, illustrating the potential for gain from cooperation associated with the unidirectional dispersal externality running from the Russian to the Norwegian zone. We first formulate the noncooperative solution and find the maximum economic yield (MEY) and maximum sustainable yield (MSY) solutions. We then analyze the cooperative solution and demonstrate numerically the effects of changing prices and dispersal intensity, together with the gains from cooperation.