European hake fishery bioeconomic management (southern stock) applying an effort tax

A bioeconomic model is developed to illustrate the way in which a tax on effort applied to a multi-fleet fishery can obtain socially optimum operating results. The analysis is applied to the European southern hake stock. We demonstrate how including heterogeneous fishermen, working simultaneously in the fishery, will lead to different equilibrium levels for the tax to be applied to each of them. Using information from the fishery which is the object of the study, the most relevant results and estimations of hake biomass, catches and effort are shown. Lastly, we make some recommendations on economic policy for this fishery.