ABSTRACT
The argument of Chapters 2 through 6 has stressed the inevitability of economic waste under unrestricted salmon fishing; and, equally important, of both waste and confusion in any management program not geared, at least in part, to the objective of economic efficiency in harvesting the resource. The failure of the White Act was rooted in the inability to define the necessary and sufficient conditions for maximization of the physical yield from the resource. Similarly, the failure even to formulate meaningful economic criteria for regulation of the fishery has largely been due to the inability to define properly and to quantify the potential net economic yield. Only when it is possible to supply reasonable estimates of the amount of economic rent that is dissipated in the fishery under open access can the importance of the cost effects of regulation and the economic reaction of the fisherman to alternative controls be brought home to administrators and legislators.
