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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 SES Framework: Initial Changes and Continuing Challenges(2012) McGinnis, Michael D.; Ostrom, Elinor"The Social-Ecological Systems (SES) framework investigated in this special issue enables researchers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds working on different resource sectors in disparate geographic areas, biophysical conditions, and temporal domains to share a common vocabulary for the construction and testing of alternative theories and models that determine which influences on processes and outcomes are especially critical in specific empirical settings. After justifying the need for such a general framework, this article summarizes changes that have already been made to this framework and discusses a few remaining ambiguities in its formulation. We expect that the SES framework will continue to change as more researchers apply it to additional contexts, but the main purpose of this article is to delineate the version that served as the basis for the theoretical innovations and empirical analyses detailed in other contributions to this special issue. The SES framework was originally designed for application to a relatively well-defined domain of common-pool resource management situations in which resource users extract resource units from a resource system, and provide for the maintenance of that system, according to rules and procedures determined within an overarching governance system, and in the context of related ecological systems and broader social-political-economic settings. Processes of resource extraction and infrastructure maintenance were identified as among the most important forms of interactions and outcomes (or action situations) located in the very center of this framework. Since social-ecological systems also generate public goods and ecosystem services, we introduce incremental revisions to the SES framework in order to generalize its applications to complex multiresource systems. We replace the restrictive term 'user' with a more generic category of 'actor' and incorporate complex patterns of interaction among multiple actors and resource systems in the context of overlapping governance systems. We also develop the impact of evaluative criteria and other sources of dynamic change within this framework. Then we discuss potential directions for later development to incorporate complex technical systems, multiple layers of governance institutions, and diverse forms of learning and adaptation. Each of these suggested modifications is developed in more detail in other contributions to this issue. As a whole, these articles demonstrate that the SES framework as currently constituted has already inspired high-quality research, and that it has the potential to further facilitate communication among scholars from a broad array of disciplines working on diverse resources in many different parts of the world."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 Strategy and the Structure of Interdependent Decision-Making Mechanisms(1967) Ostrom, ElinorFrom p. 54: The paradigm presented ... begins to sketch in the type of analysis that one could undertake when examining the affect of decision-making structures on individual behavior. It is hoped that the paradigm will be of help in stimulating further theoretical and empirical work on the relation between the structure of decision-making mechanisms and the strategies of individuals employ when attempting to reach solutions to problems through the utilization of different structures."Working Paper What Do People Bring Into the Game? Experiments in the Field about Cooperation in the Commons(2004) Cárdenas, Juan-Camilo; Ostrom, ElinorThe study of collective action requires an understanding of the individual incentives and of the institutional constraints that guide people in making choices about cooperating or defecting on the group facing the dilemma. The use of local ecosystems by groups of individuals is just one example where individual extraction increases well-being, but aggregate extraction decreases it. The use of economic experiments has enhanced the already diverse knowledge from theoretical and field sources of when and how groups can solve the problem through self-governing mechanisms. These studies have identified several factors that promote and limit collective action, associated with the nature of the production system that allows groups to benefit from a joint-access local ecosystem, and associated with the institutional incentives and constraints from both self-governed and externally imposed rules. In general, there is widespread agreement that cooperation can happen and be chosen by individuals as a rational strategy, beyond the Â"tragedy of the commonsÂ" prediction. A first step in this paper is to propose a set of layers of information that the individuals might be using to decide over their level of cooperation. The layers range from the material incentives that the specific production function imposes, to the dynamics of the game, to the composition of the group and the individual characteristics of the player. We next expand the experimental literature by analyzing data from a set of experiments conducted in the field with actual ecosystem users in three rural villages of Colombia using this framework. We find that repetition brings reciprocity motives into the decision making. Further, prior experience of the participants, their perception of external regulation, or the composition of the group in terms of their wealth and social position in the village, influence decisions to cooperate or defect in the experiment. The results suggest that understanding the multiple levels of the game, in terms of the incentives, the group and individual characteristics or the context, can help understand and therefore explore the potentials for solving the collective-action dilemma.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 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 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 An Overview of Rule Configurations(1983) Ostrom, ElinorFrom Page 1: "In an earlier paper entitled 'The Elements of An Action Situation,' I identified the generic elements of actions situations used by analysts to construct a wide variety of important types of analytical models including market, hierarchical, and bargaining models and formal games of all types. The elements are participants, positions, action sets, outcomes, information, control, and costs/benefits. They are related together in the following manner:- Participants are assigned to positions.
- Action sets are assigned to positions.
- Actions are linked to outcomes.
- Information is available about action/outcome linkages.
- Control is exercised over action/outcome linkages.
- Costs/benefits are assigned to action sets and outcome sets.
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."