The Estonian fisheries: from the Soviet system to ITQs and quota auctions

The development of the Estonian fisheries and fishing rights during the post-Soviet period is discussed. In order to deal with excessive fishing capacity, a part of the fishing rights, both volume quotas and gear-use rights, in all Estonian fisheries will be allocated each year through auctions while the remainder will be allocated on the basis of the history of the use of recent fishing rights. This was done for the first time in 2001. All fishing rights depreciate from year to year in a geometric fashion, by 10% yearly. The results of the first auctions discussed in the paper suggest that auctioning is a suitable method to manage common-pool resources such as fish stocks.