Fish and Ships in the Baltic Sea - Prices, Demand and Management

The essay discusses different aspects of the market for fish from the Baltic Sea. The first chapter introduces the subject and discusses why the market for fish is interesting and in particular why analyses of first-hand market prices can give insights into the effects of new regulations or natural variations changing the conditions for fisheries. Prices of different attributes of Baltic cod is the topic of the second chapter. The results show that larger and better quality cod have higher kilo prices than smaller and average quality cod and that price differences have increased over time. It is also shown that the quantity landed of cod with different attributes affect the the price premiums of attributes. The results could be used when evaluating changes in the composition of landed cod. The third chapter is about the effects on bargaining power of fishers when quartely quotas were replaced by yearly quotas in the Swedish Baltic cod fishery in 2011. The results show that prices have increased after the reform, which is explained with an increased bargaining power of fishers compared to buyers. Finally, the fourth chapter discusses the small-scale herring fishery in the western Baltic sea that is exempted from a system of Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQ). The main conclusion is that it is important to build other institutions dealing with the fundmental problem of access to quota when a fishery is left out of a ITQ-system