Common Property Regimes as a Solution to Problems of Scale and Linkage

Found at: https://hdl.handle.net/10535/2192
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Type:	Conference Paper
Author:	McKean, Margaret A.
Conference:	Reinventing the Commons, the Fifth Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property
Location:	Bodoe, Norway
Conf. Date:	May 24-28, 1995
Date:	1995
URI:	https://hdl.handle.net/10535/2192
Sector:	Theory
Region:
Subject(s):	IASC common pool resources--theory regimes--theory property rights
Abstract:	"Most of us would agree that efficient resource use enhances welfare and is environmentally desirable compared to less efficient resource use, because it means that we invest, get the most out of the least, and waste little. But this proposition creates a paradox between two very well accepted principles of economics: (1) private property rights and markets allow for more efficient use of resources than does government ownership (so yield desirable environmental results), and (2) private property systems and markets are chronic underproviders of public goods like environmental health (so yield inadequate environmental results). The paradox, I would submit, is a result of mismatch in scale between institutions and natural ecological systems. That is, private property rights and markets are socially and environmentally efficient only insofar as externalities are internalized."

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