Food for Thought ITQs and the economics of high-grading

Individual Transferable Quota (ITQ) are now used as a management tool in many fisheries. ITQ permit and individual the freedom to allocate resources so as to maximize net return within an individual constraint on catch. The duration of fishing opportunity, and the incentive that results is to conserve time; under this constraint, resources would be differently, and perhaps less efficiently, allocated. However, as ITQ impose instead an incentive to conserve quota units they might be expected to increase the reward from discarding low-value catches.