Coalitions in international fisheries management

We show that with symmetric agents, noncooperation is the only stable coalition structure in a fishery with more than two countries. In the case of asymmetric fishing nations, partial or full cooperation may be stable even if the number of countries exceeds two. These are important results for recent fisheries economics papers that have not allowed for coalition formation. As an example how of one can use the model, we study the problem of new entrants into Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs). We show that depending on the economic structure of the fishery, new entrants may make cooperation more difficult or easier.