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Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Working Paper
    Property Rights Conundrum: Does Common + Property = Nothing in Common and No Property Rights?
    (1987) Schlager, Edella; Ostrom, Elinor
    "The thesis we develop in this paper is that our theoretical and empirical knowledge of how various types of property rights regimes affect incentives, behavior, and outcomes cannot cumulate as long as we use an ambiguous term--common property resource--to refer to different theoretical and operational situations. We briefly review how resource economists have used the term 'common property resources' to analyze the problem of fisheries. We then analyze the different bundles of rights which are included in various conceptions of property and define four types of legal positions--owners, proprietors, claimants, and squatters--by reference to which bundle of rights is possessed or not. Next we examine whether the set of right holders is defined or not and the individual or group status of the right holders. For rights held by collectivities, we examine whether the groups are organized or not and the type of enterprise structure involved. We then present a classification of property rights and organizational arrangements which enables us to sharpen predictions about particular property rights regimes which are likely to face problems of over-exploitation, extinction of species,and over investment of resources. Finally, we will illustrate how such a conceptual scheme helps bring clarity to disparate research findings related to the lobster industry in Maine."
  • Working Paper
    Common Property, Communal Property, and Natural Resources: Some Conceptual Clarifications (DRAFT)
    (1987) Schlager, Edella; Ostrom, Elinor
    "Conceptualizing and defining property rights is a crucial step in examining natural resources and challenges to their viability. How we understand property rights not only shapes our perception of resource degradation problems but also our prescriptions for the resolution of these problems. When the terms that we use as scientists are ambiguous and refer to substantially different real world situations, we reduce our analytical and prescriptive clarity. The term 'common property resource' is a term that is used to refer to many different property-rights regimes including: (1) The absence of any property rights, (2) The absence of a sole owner, (3) The absence of private property, (4) Ownership of a resource by a small community which regulates use patterns for residents, and (5) ownership of a resource by a large government which allows all residents of that government access to a resource under varying degrees of regulation."
  • Working Paper
    Property-Rights Regimes and Natural Resources: A Conceptual Analysis
    (1991) Schlager, Edella; Ostrom, Elinor
    "The term 'common-property resource' is an example of a term repeatedly used to refer to property owned by a government or by no one. It is also used for property owned by a community of resource users. Such usage leads to confusion in scientific study and policy analysis. In this paper we develop a conceptual schema for arraying property-rights regimes that distinguishes among diverse bundles of rights ranging from authorized user, to claimant, to proprietor, and to owner. We apply this conceptual schema to analyze findings from a variety of empirical settings including the Maine lobster industry."
  • Working Paper
    CPR Coding Manual
    (1989) Ostrom, Elinor; Agrawal, Arun; Blomquist, William; Schlager, Edella; Tang, S.Y.
    "The fourth activity we have undertaken has been the identification of in-depth case studies that describe how CPR appropriators have succeeded or failed in efforts to manage inshore fisheries, small- to medium-sized irrigation systems, communal forests, or grazing lands. Identifying and coding in-depth case studies is undertaken in several steps. Most of this manual is devoted to an in-depth discussion of this activity."