Location choice in New England trawl fisheries: Old habits die hard

In his seminal work on common property resources, H. Scott Gordon proposed that in a fishery with multiple grounds, effort would be distributed such that profit rates would be equal among them. Gordon's model relies on implicit assumptions that are inaccurate and lead to false conclusions in many cases. In this paper, we present an empirically estimated model of fishery and location choice for large trawlers in New England using a random-utility framework with a nested-legit model specification. We use the model to test the validity of a behavioral model developed from ethnographic interviews with skippers. (JEL Q22).