Contests for catch shares

We study contests in which fishers (or players), in a fishery managed under a catch-share program, compete over catch shares by expending irreversible effort, and the fishery manager, influenced by the players’ effort, allocates their catch shares. We first show that the number of active players and their identities in each period depend only on the players’ marginal costs, and they remain exactly the same across all periods. Then, we show that, in each period, an active player with a lower marginal cost expends greater effort and secures a greater catch share than a player with a higher marginal cost. We also show that a player who expends zero effort due to his relatively high marginal cost ends up with a less and less catch share over time.