Implications of Taxing Quota Value in an Individual Transferable Quota Fishery

Taxing pure rents is usually considered the least distortionary method for raising revenues. In the literature on fishery economics, the term "rent" is regularly employed, suggesting that pure rents exist in that sector. Indeed, with the recent development of individual transferable quotas, the resulting market value of quota has been treated as reflecting pure resource rents. In this paper, the view that the market value of quota represents a...