Do fishing vessel buyback programs work: A survey of the evidence

Vessel and license buyback programs are being used increasingly as a tool to reduce overcapacity in fisheries. This paper examines buybacks programs in a number fisheries around the world, in order to evaluate their effectiveness in achieving their objectives. We show that, though the objectives are usually similar, the design of different buyback programs varies widely with important ramifications. Although proper design can improve the performance of buyback programs, we conclude that buyback programs are generally not an effective way to address the problems they are meant to solve.