|
|
|
PDF
|
|
Type:
|
Conference Paper |
|
Author:
|
Glomm, Gerhard; Lagunoff, Roger D. |
|
Conference:
|
Inequality and the Commons, the Third Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property |
|
Location:
|
Washington, DC |
|
Conf. Date:
|
September |
|
Date:
|
1992 |
|
URI:
|
https://hdl.handle.net/10535/8151
|
|
Sector:
|
Theory |
|
Region:
|
|
|
Subject(s):
|
coalitions
IASC
property rights--models
common pool resources--models
|
|
Abstract:
|
"We give a model of coalitional property rights (CPR) regimes -- regimes in which ownership of a good is attributable to coalition of various sizes. Specifically, for each good, we define a legal structure that specifies the legal coalitions of individuals that share a communal claim to that good. We then ask: what types of CPR regimes are socially stable in the sense of having a nonempty core? We give conditions on the legal structure and the primitives of the economy that achieve social stability in this sense. In particular, we study to what extent the distribution of wealth determines social stability. Three successively more general models are studied.(I) Unanimity rules. Unanimity is required for a legal coalition to recontract against (block) the status quo. In this case, the issue of social stability is trivial; the core is always nonempty. Each agent's ability to veto an allocation allows a characterization in termms of the economies that are privatized by dividing up the communal endowment among the members of each legal coalition. (II) Pure exclusion rules. Eligible subcoalition (e.g. simple majorities) can recontract by expropriating the legal coalition's entire endowment. The presence of voting cycles can easily lead to social instability. We show that if endowment holdings are sufficiently 'specialized' and each agent's 'veto power' sufficiently large, then stability can be achieved despite the presence of cycles in some goods. (III) Partial exclusion rules. Subcoalitions can recontract by expropriating only some fraction of the legal coalition's endowment. These rules further alleviate the instability of voting cycles. We show that if all agents' 'nonexcludable holdings' are specialized and sufficiently large then, as with (II), stability can be achieved."
|