Economists tend to rely upon tried and true examples to make their theoretical points. Since H. Scott Gordon’s 1954 article entitled “The Economic Theory of a Common Property Resource: The Fishery,” the overexploitation of an open-access resource has been a usual presentation in any...

This paper builds on the framework developed by Anderson and McChesney (1994) to analyze two sovereigns bargaining over the use of scarce resources. We adapt the "raid or trade" model of disputes over land to the high seas fisheries context, where sovereigns must decide whether to continue the...