Fisheries management must be based on biological expertise but must also, ultimately, satisfy economic criteria. Fisheries management which disregards economic objectives and needs might well succeed in preserving fish stocks but will waste other resources such as investment funds and labout and fail to serve the fishing industry effectively. This important new work is directed to fisheries management and is designed to help achieve an optimum balance between the biological and economic requirements of fisheries. An introduction to the economic analysis of fisheries compares optimal fishing to unregulated fishing. This is followed by a discussion of three popular fishing models and the problems arising from random fluctuations in fish stocks. The final chapter deals with the political economy of fishing regulations.

Rognvaldur Hannesson was born and reaised in Iceland, but educated in Sweden and Canada. His academic career has been in Norway where he has been Professor of Fisheries Economics at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration in Bergen since 1983.