Abstract

It is widely believed that there have been significant levels of cod landed from the North Sea over and
above permitted quota levels in recent years as the TAC and quota system of the Common Fisheries
Policy has squeezed the fishing opportunities of EU fleets in an attempt to conserve the fish stock. The
extent is described diplomatically as "Unallocated" in ICES Working Group Reports which suggest that
the amount has exceeded 10% of official landings at times but at other times, when the fish have been
particularly scarce, ghost fish have been reported in order to preserve track record. This data-fouling
weakens scientific and economic modelling of the fisheries. However, a way of calculating the amount of
misreporting is to observe the behaviour of the fish markets. Studies conducted on the fisheries around
the North Sea have indicated that cod prices respond to the quantity landed despite being part of a large
international market. After testing for market integration and the direction of causality in the demand
system, this project models the market for North Sea cod as an international unit and uses dummy
variables on both the intercept and gradient of the demand curve to separate the impact of misreported
landings from the residuals. The product is a revised series of aggregate landings of North Sea cod.