■ Abstract This paper presents a critical assessment of the field of common property. After discussing briefly the major findings and accomplishments of the scholarship on the commons, the paper pursues two strategies of critique. The first strategy of friendly critique accepts the basic assumptions of most writings on common property to show that scholars of commons have discovered far more va...

Recent research developments in common-pool resource models emphasize the importance of links with ecological systems and the presence of non-linearities, thresholds and multiple steady states. In a recent paper Kossioris et al. (2008) develop a methodology for deriving feedback Nash equilibria for non-linear differential games and apply this methodology to a common-pool resource model of a lak...

Common pool resource systems are governed by a wide variety of institutions designed to promote long run resource viability. Relatively little work has focused on the use of majority rule voting in managing resource stocks. This paper develops a theoretical and experimental framework for assessing the efficiency of majority rule voting in allocating appropriation rights to a group of resource u...

Beneficiaries of common pool resources (CPRs) may select available noncooperative and regulatory exogenous institutions for managing the resource, as well as cooperative management institutions. All these institutions may increase the longterm gains, prolong the life of the resource, and help to escape the tragedy of the commons’ trap. Cooperative game theory approaches can serve as the backbon...

This paper focuses on introducing and comparing various types of external regulatory institutions for management of common pool resources (CPRs), namely the quota-based management, resource status-based management, tax-based management, and bankruptcy management institutions. The performance of these regulatory institutions is demonstrated, using a numerical groundwater exploitation example. Re...

As demands for limited natural resources increase, developing management institutions that ensure the sustainability of such resources is essential. Natural resources are Common Pool Resources (CPRs), managed under different noncooperative, cooperative, and externally imposed management frameworks. While early studies of non-cooperative CPR management suggest inevitable “tragedy of the commons,...

Many economic decisions are susceptible to either free-riding, or excessive rivalry or overextraction. Equally sharing output in partnerships introduces a free-riding incentive which may offset the latter. We conduct a laboratory experiment to assess the performance of output sharing in partnerships by introducing equal-sharing subgroups of size one, four and six into a twelve-person common poo...