Atlantic Salmon Fishery in the Baltic Sea - A Case of Trivial Cooperation

This paper analyses the management of the Atlantic salmon stocks in the Baltic Sea through a coalition\ud game in partition function form. The signs of economic and biological overexploitation of these salmon stocks over the last two decades indicate that cooperation among the harvesting countries, under the European Union's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), has been ostensible. Combining a twostage game of four asymmetric players with a disaggregated bioeconomic model, we conclude that cooperation under the present Relative Stability Principle (RSP) is not a stable outcome. In contrast, the equilibrium of the game is full noncooperation. The paper also addresses the possibility of enhancing cooperation through more flexible fishing strategies. The results indicate that partial cooperation is stable under specific sharing schemes. It is also shown that substantial economic benefits could have been realised by reallocating the fishing effort, without compromising stock sustainability