The development of resource rent in Norwegian pelagic and coastal fisheries

Abstract

This thesis investigates the development of the resource rent in the pelagic and coastal fisheries in Norway from 2003 to 2018. Two methods are presented in this thesis, but only one of them is used to calculate the resource rent. The first method is based on the weighted average cost of capital of the Norwegian fishing industry, and the second method is based on comparing the return of the capital of fisheries to the general aggregate Norwegian economy. We have mainly focused on the second method. The calculations and results indicate that no resource rent was present until 2008 for pelagic fisheries and 2014 for coastal fisheries. Since that time, the resource rent for the pelagic and coastal fisheries has been, on average, 31.5% and 1.7% of the export value of the fishing industry, respectively. There are several reasons behind this delay for the resource rent to appear, one such reason is the decline of fish catches from 2000 to 2008 and 2014. The industry was rationalizing during this period, and this rationalization led to the reduction of landings, and therefore, no resource rent was produced. Also, the number of fishers and fishing vessels has decreased over time. The resource rent does appear when catches increases in 2008 and 2014. In addition, one can also assume that the weakening of the Norwegian krone contributed to the emergence of resource after 2008 and 2014.