ABSTRACT
This chapter considers non-cooperative use of a common property fish stock, namely, the North-east Atlantic cod. Attention is focused on a restricted access fishery where only two agents participate in the exploitation of the resource, the aim being to predict the number of vessels that each agent in such a situation will find in his or her best interest to employ. An important although self-evident aspect of the game is that both agents are jointly constrained by the population dynamics of the resource. The key assumption of the chapter is that players undertake investment in capital that is irreversible. This assumption is quite realistic because capital embodied in fishing vessels is often non-malleable: non-malleability is used here to refer to the existence of constraints upon the disinvestment of capital assets utilized in the exploitation of the resource (Clark et al., 1979). This implies that once a fishing firm or authority invests in a fleet of vessels it either has to keep it until the fleet is depreciated, or else the vessels can only be disposed of at considerable economic loss.
