Social Econ Blog

Here's a link to an Excel file holding the fishery game spreadsheet (scroll down to "Download Now") I put together and tried to use in class on Monday. I had some parameter differences that confused things, but you can manipulate any cells in yellow to get a sense, and walk through a few rounds of decisions. A graph to the right of the columns plots the overall annual state. The first sheet is blank and the second is an example of the most rapid exhaustion possible. Ignore the error messages for cells below

This isn't an assignment, just something to play with if you're interested. A few questions to think about:

What happens to a company that doesn't buy boats as quickly as possible but rather waits?

Are there any signals that the fishery is being depleted? If a company knows the fishery is nearing depletion, is it better to accelerate harvest or slow down? From an individual company's perspective, is it ever better to not send a boat to fish?

From a purely profit-based motive, how would you identify the best strategy for a company? How would this strategy be dependent on the strategies of other companies?

Think about how you would design rules for a fishery to prevent depletion. We'll be looking at policies and incentives for fishery management in more detail later.