Browsing by Author "Roumasset, James A."

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The Coevolution of Property, Governance, and Inequality: A Constitutional Perspective
(1992) Roumasset, James A.
"The evolution of property rights in the economic literature is alternatively viewed as inexorable tragedy or 'best of all possible worlds.' In his classic article, Garrett Hardin (1968) has been characterized as asserting that without coercive action - either 'enclosing' private property or providing central government direction - land and other resources will be much abused. Demsetz (1967), on the other hand, presents the more sanguine possibility that private property will indeed arise, spontaneously or otherwise, when the benefits outweigh the costs. Both Hardin and Demsetz fail to articulate the possibility that small groups may agree to an efficient management regime, without either central government or the institution of private property. Moreover, the disagreement between these two positions helps to underscore the ambiguity regarding the source of institutional change. "In this paper, I attempt to outline a fundamental theory of the evolution of property rights in land. Unlike Demsetz and Hardin, common property resources are not prejudged as being inefficient. Different property rights regimes are assumed to be appropriate for different environmental conditions. In addition, the intention is to describe how an evolution of property rights could have proceeded as a spontaneous order."
Constitutional Choice for Common Property Management: The Case of Irrigation Associations
(1985) Roumasset, James A.
"Massive investments in irrigation facilities by developing countries and largely funded by international and bilateral donor agencies attest to the belief that irrigation is a key weapon in the battle against world hunger and poverty. Yet ex post evaluation of irrigation projects tell a disappointing story. Benefits are typically vastly below the projected levels. In the literature that has grown up around this problem, the most commonly cited symptom of poor water management is 'organizational failures.' Some progress has been made towards generating principles for the successful organization of irrigation systems by studying indigenous water user associations that have evolved largely independently of the plans and programs of central governments."
Economic Depreciation, National Income Accounting, And Common Property Resource Management
(1991) Endress, Lee H.; Roumasset, James A.
"This paper presents a conceptual framework that we believe will serve as a sound basis for measuring the economic depreciation of natural resources. The framework we propose is founded on a theoretical model of resource depreciation which can be applied to the harvesting of renewable resources in both the steady and in the transition to the steady state, as well as to the extraction of nonrenewable resources. Additionally, the model allows for the planner to determine economic depreciation in the typical case that harvesting or extraction does not conform to an efficient program."
The Evolution of Cooperation from a Non-cooperative Game with Public Goods
(1991) Laine, Charles; Roumasset, James A.
"When players systematically underestimate public goods provision by others due to pessimism or risk-aversion, it is possible that efficient provision will emerge even in a non-cooperative setting. Once efficient provision is reached, it can be sustained in a repeated game setting as the focal point of strategic punishment to sustain the cooperative outcome."
Land Titles, Tenure Security and Agricultural Credit: A Review of Principles, Evidence and Hypotheses
(1983) Roumasset, James A.; Uy, Marilou
"It is common to view security of tenure and, more specifically, the existence of alienable land titles as preconditions for agricultural credit and efficient levels of investment in agricultural production. In this paper, we review the principles and hypotheses, and evidence on these themes and suggest a perspective for organizing future research. In what might be called the 'moral economy' or neo-Marxian perspective, modern capitalistic institutions such as legally enforceable land titles are thought to undermine the harmony of the indigenous social order, replace 'shared poverty' with mechanisms for exploitation, and create class conflict (see Scott, 1976; Geertz, 1963; and the assessments of Popkin, 1978 and Roumasset and Smith, 1981) . At the other extreme, what might be called the 'new orthodoxy,' is the view that economic development requires the creation of an institutional infrastructure to facilitate-efficient resource allocation by competitive markets. In what follows, we also explore the view that the mix of traditional, market and government institutions evolves in response to relative factor endowments and technology. While it is therefore possible that creation of legally enforceable land rights may lower the supply price of credit, it is also possible that replacement of indigenous institutions by artificial ones may be premature and not have the desired effect. While land titles may facilitate the enforcement of lending contracts, they are not the only enforcement device."
Modernization, Specialization, and the Coevolution of Agricultural Institutions
(1993) Roumasset, James A.
"It is said that opponents in a vigorous debate share at least one premise in common. That observation appears to characterize the three schools of thought on common property institutions. The first is the privatization school (e.g. Demsetz, 1967), according to which private property is the most efficient institution for governing resource allocation. The second is the centralization school allegedly represented by Hardin (e.g. 1968). It is by now much noted that both the privatization and centralization schools fail to distinguish between common property and open access. A third school of thought, which one might call the communitarian school, argues for the superiority of community control (examples may be found e.g. in Bromley, 1990). The debate between these schools regarding which of these three forms of organization is best is grounded in the false premise that the relative performance of alternative institutions can be judged independently from the environments in which they function. Just as the old structure-conduct-performance paradigm is now regarded as defunct, due to its implicit assumption that the structure of industries are exogenous, so too does the common property debate suffer from misplaced exogeniety. "The present paper takes the alternative viewpoint that institutions are endogenous and the superiority of one institution over another does not carry over from one environment to the next. The discussion is organized as follows. Section 2 provides a sketch of a conceptual framework that facilitates explanations of varying degrees of centralization of decision-making. Common property is seen to be an intermediate form of organization, where-decision making is centralized at the local or community level. Section 3 applies the framework to the case of the modernization of agricultural economies. Concluding remarks including policy implications are provided in Section 4."