ECONOMICS OF THE FISHERIES 467 



munities of the State. In like manner, other strategic opportunities could 

 almost certainly be found by analytical study. 



It is therefore recommended that economic and biological studies be 

 prosecuted continuously, in parallel and in close cooperation with the regu- 

 lating authorities, to establish a strategy of exploitation of the State's pro- 

 duction as a whole to the best advantage of the fishing community. 



The foregoing recommendation is based on our studies of price in 

 relation to supply of fish in the United States as a whole, the presumption 

 being that if information and recommendations of the kind relating to 

 North Carolina fish were passed on to fishermen, their actions would be 

 influenced favorably. Actually, we do not know to what extent fishermen 

 are already aware of and responsive to the current economic forces of supply 

 and demand, nor do we know how prices of North Carolina fish are estab- 

 lished, or where. The small part of the product which goes to Fulton Market, 

 New York, is priced competitively at New York; the field investigator's 

 observations of the whole up-State mechanism indicate that sellers, retail, 

 wholesale, and distributor, add a fixed amount of money per pound, box, or 

 other unit, in making their selling prices, but who makes the prices to 

 which they add their mark-ups? It can hardly be the fishermen. Judging 

 from the field data available to us, we can draw only the conclusion that 

 the prices are made by the coastal producer-dealers, i.e., those distributors 

 who receive the fish first-hand from the fishermen. If this is so, then the 

 ordinary forces of supply and demand (from consumers) do not operate at 

 all in their classical manner so as to determine how much or what kind of 

 fish the fishermen try to produce. All of our studies of the fisheries of the 

 country as a whole indicate that the forces of supply and demand do in fact 

 operate in the classical manner to determine and regulate the quantity, 

 kind, and place of production. North Carolina may be an exception to that 

 rule, in the sense that the interaction between supply and consumer de- 

 mand is mediated in some complex manner by the price making of producer- 

 dealers, distributors, wholesalers, and retailers. 



With such a system it would be less simple than it otherwise might be to 

 establish a general strategy so far as the State is concerned, for final price 

 would bear little relation either to the cost of production or to the relative 

 desirability of the different species. 



Such a system also fails to take into consideration the risks involved in 

 the valuations in the various species. Our data are too meagre and the subject 

 is too important to reach conclusions with what information we now have. 



It is therefore recommended that further field studies be made of the 

 whole pricing arrangements for seafoods of all kinds on the coast of North 

 Carolina and throughout the distribution mechanism in the various markets 



