University of New Hampshire Scholars\u27 Repository
Abstract
The Tragedy of the Commons is a widely known problem debated amongst economists for years. Even the topic of the Tragedy of the Commons when applied to fishing has been debated several times. The fishing industry is a major part of the culture and economy here in New Hampshire and the conversation how to properly tax and regulate it to combat this problem is one that has been taking place and will continue to take place for several years. The purpose of this project was to examine this problem at a state level and look at the relationship between State Tax Collections from fishing licenses, the number of Paid Fishing License Holders in New Hampshire and the GDP of the fishing industry. I overall had mixed results with some datasets representing significant statistical relationships, while others had marginal results. More research would need to be done in this area to make any certain conclusions. There are several areas in this topic that I couldn’t analyze for a variety of reasons, and this project merely scratches the surface of the amount of research left to be done
