Reinventing the Commons

Found at: https://hdl.handle.net/10535/2191
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Type:	Conference Paper
Author:	McKean, Margaret A.
Conference:	Voices from the Commons, the Sixth Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property
Location:	Bodoe, Norway
Conf. Date:	May 28, 1995
Date:	1996
URI:	https://hdl.handle.net/10535/2191
Sector:	Theory
Region:	East Asia
Subject(s):	IASC new commons common pool resources trade markets
Abstract:	"It is a great honor to follow Douglass North in offering the closing remarks for this fifth meeting of the IASCP. We are indebted to institutional economic historians in general and Douglass North in particular for pointing out the impact of institutional structures on economic growth, and especially for making us appreciate the importance of clear specification of property rights in economic growth and in efficient use of resources. When this idea is combined with the crude (but apparently true) historical simplification that many societies used to have common property institutions and that individual private property has in many instances displaced common property, one might carelessly conclude that individual property is the more efficient form, requiring that we dismantle common property. This conclusion is, of course, at the heart of the campaign to privatize resource use around the world, and I believe that it represents a grotesque misunderstanding of North's insights."

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