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Working Paper The Power and Limitations of Proportional Cutbacks in Common-Pool Resources(1998) Gardner, Roy; Herr, Andrew; Ostrom, Elinor; Walker, James M."This paper examines the success and limitations of proportional cutbacks as an allocation rule for improving the performance of common pool resources (CPRs). Two field cases, one success and one failure, motivate the analysis. For symmetric CPRs, we establish the existence of efficiency-enhancing proportional cutbacks. We then introduce complications that arise in the presence of asymmetries, where there are high value types and low value types. This asymmetry induces a continuum of proportional cutbacks that raise efficiency above Nash equilibrium. Calibrating a linear-quadratic CPR model to global carbon dioxide emissions, the efficiency and distributional consequences of proportional cutbacks like those embodied in the Kyoto Protocol are derived."Working Paper Rent Dissipation in Common Pool Resource Environments: Experimental Evidence(1989) Walker, James M.; Ostrom, Elinor; Gardner, Roy"This paper examines the resource environment classified as common-pool resource. The intent is to highlight and more carefully classify the specific forms of behavioral problems encountered in this resource allocation environment, with an emphasis on the particular allocation problem known commonly as 'rent dissipation.' We present evidence from laboratory experiments designed to investigate the robustness of theoretical models of rent dissipation in such environments. Following the theoretical work of such authors as Scott Gordon (1954), we investigate the strength of theoretical models which predict that users of common-pool resources will appropriate units from the resource at a rate which exceeds the point at which marginal returns equal marginal extraction costs. The logic of such models argues that appropriators will ignore the production externalites of their own appropriation and focus only on average returns from the resource. Following this argument, appropriation will take place at a level in which all rents are dissipated. Our experimental results present evidence from a behavioral investment environment designed to capture the key theoretical assumptions of the rent dissipation models. We offer evidence related to the extent of rent dissipation as related to subject experience in the environment, the form of the production technology of the common pool resource, and the size of the appropriation group."Working Paper Rules and Games: Institutions and Common Pool Resources (DRAFT)(1991) Ostrom, Elinor; Gardner, Roy; Walker, James M."The central thesis of this book is that individuals jointly using a CPR face incentives leading to harm for themselves and others. The degree of harm depends on the rules they use and the environment in which they make decisions. We formalize this relationship using the framework of institutional analysis and noncooperative game theory. The relationship between rules and games is of fundamental importance to all of the social sciences and particularly when social science is used in policy-making. We intend to explore the general relationship between rules and games and do so by focusing on a broad family of games of considerable substantive importance—the games that appropriators play when they decide upon investment and harvesting activities related to CPRs. We begin with a formal definition for a CPR and a CPR dilemma."Working Paper Sanctioning by Participants in Collective Action Problems(1990) Walker, James M.; Gardner, Roy; Ostrom, Elinor"This paper will focus on explaining monitoring and sanctioning, since these activities are crucial to an explanation of the findings in all four categories discussed above. In Section II we summarize two examples of field settings that fall into the second category to provide a more detailed view of what this behavior looks like in natural settings. In Sections III and IV we move from field settings into an experimental laboratory setting where a substantial level of control over relevant parameters is achieved. Section III provides a baseline situation of limited access CPRs where appropriators cannot monitor or sanction. In Section IV, we analyze experiments where appropriators monitor each others' behavior and sanction one another if they are willing to expend resources to do so. We find that subgame perfect equilibrium theory does not explain observed sanctioning behavior the field or experimental settings of limited access CPRs."