Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cir/cirwor/2001s-14.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Ricardian Model of the Tragedy of the Commons

Author

Listed:
  • Pierre Lasserre
  • Antoine Soubeyran
Abstract
This paper revisits the tragedy of the commons when agents have different capabilities in both production and encroachment activities, and can allocate their time between them. Under fairly general assumptions on production and encroachment technologies, an individual's expected income is convex with respect his actions so that individuals specialize. Consequently, in equilibrium, the economy is divided into at most two homogenous groups: encroachers and producers. The partition obeys a relative advantage criterion. Several equilibria may exist. The tragedy of the commons equilibrium without production always does; the Pareto optimal allocation of activities may not be an equilibrium. We show that minute changes in property right enforcement may lead to drastic improvements for society. We argue that, in convex games such as this paper's role choice game, bounded rationality is a natural assumption, and the concept of local Nash equilibrium is the natural analytical tool to handle it. Nous étudions la tragédie des richesses communes dans un cadre où des agents qui diffèrent par leurs capacités productives et par leurs aptitudes à la prédation, choisissent d'allouer leur temps entre ces deux activités. Sous des hypothèses peu restrictives sur les technologies, les revenus attendus d'un agent sont convexes par rapport à ses actions, si bien que les individus se spécialisent et que la société se divise, à l'équilibre, en deux groupes au maximum: les prédateurs et les producteurs. La répartition s'opère selon un critère d'avantage comparatif. Il y a plusieurs équilibres. La tragédie des richesses communes (aucun producteur) est toujours l'un d'eux; l'allocation Pareto optimale pas toujours. Nous montrons que des changements mineurs dans la mise en vigueur des droits de propriété peuvent mener à des améliorations majeures pour la société. Les jeux convexes tels celui-ci appellent l'hypothèse de rationalité limitée; nous introduisons un concept d'équilibre de Nash local qui en est le pendant analytique naturel.

Suggested Citation

  • Pierre Lasserre & Antoine Soubeyran, 2001. "A Ricardian Model of the Tragedy of the Commons," CIRANO Working Papers 2001s-14, CIRANO.
    • Handle: RePEc:cir:cirwor:2001s-14
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cirano.qc.ca/files/publications/2001s-14.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Parkash Chander & Henry Tulkens, 2006. "The Core of an Economy with Multilateral Environmental Externalities," Springer Books, in: Parkash Chander & Jacques Drèze & C. Knox Lovell & Jack Mintz (ed.), Public goods, environmental externalities and fiscal competition, chapter 0, pages 153-175, Springer.
    2. Parkash Chandler & Henry Tulkens & Jean-Pascal Ypersele & Stephane Willems, 2006. "The Kyoto Protocol: An Economic and Game Theoretic Interpretation," Springer Books, in: Parkash Chander & Jacques Drèze & C. Knox Lovell & Jack Mintz (ed.), Public goods, environmental externalities and fiscal competition, chapter 0, pages 195-215, Springer.
    3. Lueck, Dean, 1994. "Common property as an egalitarian share contract," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 93-108, September.
    4. Dasgupta, Ani & Nti, Kofi O., 1998. "Designing an optimal contest," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 587-603, November.
    5. Ito, Masaru & Saijo, Tatsuyoshi & Une, Masashi, 1995. "The Tragedy of the Commons revisited Identifying behavioral principles," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 311-335, December.
    6. Vislie, Jon, 1994. "Efficiency and equilibria in complementary teams," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 83-91, January.
    7. Jean J. Gabszewicz & Lisa Grazzini, 1999. "Taxing Market Power," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 1(4), pages 475-497, October.
    8. Weitzman, Martin L., 1974. "Free access vs private ownership as alternative systems for managing common property," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 225-234, June.
    9. Lu, Ding, 1994. "The entrepreneurs who do both: Production and rent-seeking," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 93-98, January.
    10. Roemer John E. & Silvestre Joaquim, 1993. "The Proportional Solution for Economies with Both Private and Public Ownership," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 426-444, April.
    11. Brander, James A & Taylor, M Scott, 1998. "The Simple Economics of Easter Island: A Ricardo-Malthus Model of Renewable Resource Use," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(1), pages 119-138, March.
    12. Fender, John, 1999. "A general equilibrium model of crime and punishment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 437-453, July.
    13. repec:bla:jpbect:v:1:y:1999:i:4:p:475-97 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Hillman, Arye L. & Van Long, Ngo & Soubeyran, Antoine, 2001. "Protection, lobbying, and market structure," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 383-409, August.
    15. Bergstrom, Theodore & Blume, Lawrence & Varian, Hal, 1986. "On the private provision of public goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 25-49, February.
    16. Dornbusch, Rudiger & Fischer, Stanley & Samuelson, Paul A, 1977. "Comparative Advantage, Trade, and Payments in a Ricardian Model with a Continuum of Goods," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(5), pages 823-839, December.
    17. de Meza, David & Gould, J R, 1992. "The Social Efficiency of Private Decisions to Enforce Property Rights," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(3), pages 561-580, June.
    18. Nitzan, Shmuel, 1994. "Modelling rent-seeking contests," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 41-60, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David Croix & Davide Dottori, 2008. "Easter Island’s collapse: a tale of a population race," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 27-55, March.
    2. Herzing, Mathias, 2021. "Multiple equilibria in the context of inspection probabilities depending on firms’ relative emissions," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    3. Richard Cornes & Roger Hartley & Yuji Tamura, 2019. "Two‐Aggregate Games: Demonstration Using a Production–Appropriation Model," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 121(1), pages 353-378, January.
    4. Ngo Van Long, 2019. "Managing, Inducing, and Preventing Regime Shifts: A Review of the Literature," CESifo Working Paper Series 7749, CESifo.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jongwook Kim & Joseph T. Mahoney, 2002. "Resource-based and property rights perspectives on value creation: the case of oil field unitization," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(4-5), pages 225-245.
    2. Johan Eyckmans & Michael Finus, 2006. "New roads to international environmental agreements: the case of global warming," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 7(4), pages 391-414, December.
    3. Stefan Ambec & Yann Kervinio, 2016. "Cooperative decision-making for the provision of a locally undesirable facility," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 46(1), pages 119-155, January.
    4. Thomas Vendryes, 2014. "Peasants Against Private Property Rights: A Review Of The Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(5), pages 971-995, December.
    5. Johan Eyckmans & Henry Tulkens, 2006. "Simulating Coalitionally Stable Burden Sharing Agreements for the Climate Change Problem," Springer Books, in: Parkash Chander & Jacques Drèze & C. Knox Lovell & Jack Mintz (ed.), Public goods, environmental externalities and fiscal competition, chapter 0, pages 218-249, Springer.
    6. Jia, Hao & Skaperdas, Stergios & Vaidya, Samarth, 2013. "Contest functions: Theoretical foundations and issues in estimation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 211-222.
    7. Hillman, Arye L. & Van Long, Ngo & Soubeyran, Antoine, 2001. "Protection, lobbying, and market structure," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 383-409, August.
    8. Carraro, Carlo & Bosello, Francesco & Buchner, Barbara & Raggi, Davide, 2003. "Can Equity Enhance Efficiency? Some Lessons from Climate Negotiations," CEPR Discussion Papers 3606, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Chander, Parkash & Tulkens, Henry, 2006. "Cooperation, Stability and Self-Enforcement in International Environmental Agreements: A Conceptual Discussion," Coalition Theory Network Working Papers 12170, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    10. Long, Ngo Van & Soubeyran, Antoine, 1996. "Lobbying for protection by heterogeneous firms," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 19-32, April.
    11. J. Amegashie, 2006. "A contest success function with a tractable noise parameter," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 126(1), pages 135-144, January.
    12. Stefan Szymanski, 2010. "The Economic Design of Sporting Contests," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: The Comparative Economics of Sport, chapter 1, pages 1-78, Palgrave Macmillan.
    13. Kai Konrad & Wolfgang Leininger, 2011. "Self-enforcing norms and efficient non-cooperative collective action in the provision of public goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 146(3), pages 501-520, March.
    14. Mustafa Yildirim, 2015. "Accuracy in contests: players’ perspective," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 19(1), pages 67-90, March.
    15. repec:elg:eechap:15325_3 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Baker, Matthew J. & Conning, Jonathan, 2021. "The Transformations of Customary Property Regimes in Africa: An Analytical Framing," 2021 Conference, August 17-31, 2021, Virtual 315325, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    17. Ok, Efe A. & Sethi, Rajiv & Kockesen, Levent, 1997. "Interdependent Preference Formation," Working Papers 97-18, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics, New York University.
    18. Konrad, Kai A., 2007. "Strategy in contests: an introduction [Strategie in Turnieren – eine Einführung]," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Processes and Governance SP II 2007-01, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    19. Bombardini, Matilde & Trebbi, Francesco, 2012. "Competition and political organization: Together or alone in lobbying for trade policy?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 18-26.
    20. Thierry Bréchet & François Gerard & Henry Tulkens, 2011. "Efficiency vs. Stability in Climate Coalitions: A Conceptual and Computational Appraisal," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1), pages 49-76.
    21. Luis Corchón, 2007. "The theory of contests: a survey," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 11(2), pages 69-100, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Property rights; institutions; commons; convex games; general equilibrium; bounded rationality; Droits de propriété; institutions; propriété commune; jeux convexes; équilibre général; rationalité limitée;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making
    • K00 - Law and Economics - - General - - - General (including Data Sources and Description)

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cir:cirwor:2001s-14. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ciranca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.