Provided that the ITQ system can continue to be enforced, removing the restrictions on foreign ownership of ITQs should not pose a problem for industry efficiency. Foreign owners of ITQs, like their domestic counterparts, would have an incentive to lobby for TACs to be constrained to a level that maximises rents, and hence the value of the quotas, and to monitor quota enforcement. So long as foreign-based fishing companies are not able to reduce labour costs by replacing Icelandic fishing crews with lower-paid foreign crews, there is no reason to believe that they would have a lower cost structure and, therefore, systematically be prepared to pay more for Icelandic companies to acquire their ITQs than domestic investors.