Changes in Property Rights in a Common-Pool Resource, 1600 to 1850

Abstract

"The aim of this paper is to analyzing the development of property rights from the sixteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century in an agricultural area in upland Sweden, where the use of common-pool resources for animal husbandry were important. We will follow the transformation of the parish's forest-covered outlying land in central Sweden from open access to a communal common-property regime and finally to a common-property regime conducted on private property, i.e. the commons were converted to privately owned land but animal husbandry was still conducted as a collective action. I will discuss how these changes happened and how they affected the peasants who used the forests for grazing their animals."