Information Sharing and Cooperative Search in Fisheries

This paper studies equilibrium search and learning in a dynamic shing gamethat is played by independent shermen and by members of an information sharingCooperative. Once collected, information about the location of productive sh-ing sites is an excludable public good. We show that independent shermen donot internalize the full value of information and do not replicate rst-best searchpatterns. An information sharing Cooperative faces a free-riding problem as eachmember prefers that another undertake costly search for information. Contracts canbe written to improve upon free-riding, however they may create inefficient searchrelative to the rst-best. The results explain why information sharing Cooperativesare rare in sheries and provide insights for the regulation of sheries.[...]