New thesis on fisheries management
On Monday 15 June 2020 Evangelos Toumasatos will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend his thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.
Prescribed topic for the trial lecture:
Game Theory and Climate Agreements
Trial lecture:
10:15 Zoom video conference, NHH
Title of the thesis:
Essays on game theory and fisheries management
Summary:
This thesis is organized into three self-contained chapters that fit well under the research umbrella of game theory and fisheries management. A fishery game with unique characteristics and structure is presented in each chapter.
In the first chapter, coalition formation in the Northeast Atlantic mackerel fishery is investigated. The authors draw from the literature on coalition games and in particular on the ones with externalities also known as partition function games to study the degree of cooperation before and after Brexit between the European Union, the United Kingdom, Norway, the Faroe Islands and Iceland. The results demonstrate that in the absence of Brexit, the current management regime at that time is a stable outcome in all scenarios tested, whereas only in one after Brexit. This chapter is co-authored with Stein Ivar Steinshamn and is published in the International Game Theory Review.
In the second chapter, a seasonal bioeconomic model is applied to address the consequences of non-cooperation in fisheries that exhibit periodic variations, like Arctic Cod, Atlantic Mackerel and Norwegian spring-spawning Herring. Seasonality is an important feature of many commercial fisheries since both biological processes and human activities occur on a seasonal instead of an annual basis. The approach captures non-cooperative behavior between two types of players: i) an incumbent leader, and ii) multiple asymmetric potential entrants (followers). The results are compared to the benchmark case without strategic interaction. In presence of multiple followers, the leader adopts a more aggressive fishing strategy in all seasons. As a consequence, entry for some followers is delayed or not even realized.
In the third and last chapter, an attempt to better understand and quantify the basis upon which fisheries agreements are being drawn up is made. Since the establishment of the Exclusive Economic Zones regime, a number of nations have entered into bilateral agreements over access to fishing stocks that occurred beyond their sovereignty. Today the most known, perhaps, agreements of such type are the so-called sustainable fisheries partnership agreements (SFPAs) between the EU and non-EU coastal states, like Mauritania and Maroco. A game theoretic model is proposed where a country with some sort of property right over a fishing resource is faced with the following dilemma: freely grant fishing quotas to a domestic firm or sell them to a foreign agent in return for an endogenously determined price. This chapter is co-authored with Leif Kristoffer Sandal and Stein Ivar Steinshamn.
Defense:
12:15, Aud B/Zoom video conference, NHH
Members of the evaluation committee:
Professor Emeritus Rögnvaldur Hannesson (leader of the committee), Department of Business and Management Science, NHH
Pedro Pintassilgo, University of Algarve
Lone Grønbæk, University of Southern Denmark SDU
Supervisors:
Professor Stein Ivar Steinshamn (main supervisor), Department of Business and Management Science, NHH
Professor Leif Kristoffer Sandal, Department of Business and Management Science, NHH
University Lecturer Marko Lindroos, University of Helsinki