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Now showing 1 - 10 of 977
  • Working Paper
    In Praise of the Commons: Another Case Study
    (2001) Tietzel, Manfred
    Subsequently published under the same title in the European Journal of Law and Economics, 12: 159-171 2001. "Common-pool allocation systems do not have the best of reputations in economic literature, since they are normally connected with the dissipation of rents. The present case study argues that in the case of procurement and allocation of human organ transplants a reciprocal common-pool allocation system is superior other systems, including market allocation."
  • Conference Paper
    Social Capital and Cooperation: Communication, Bounded Rationality, and Behavioral Heuristics
    (1992) Gardner, Roy; Ostrom, Elinor; Walker, James M.
    "Common-pool resources are natural or man made resources used in common by multiple users, where yield is subtractable (rival) and exclusion is nontrivial (but not necessarily impossible). The role of face-to-face communication in CPR situations, where individuals must repeatedly decide on the number of resource units to withdraw from a common-pool, is open to considerable theoretical and policy debate. In this paper, we summarize the findings from a series of experiments in which we operationalize face-toface communication (without the presence of external enforcement). In an attempt to understand the high degree of cooperation observed in the laboratory, we turn to a bounded rationality explanation as a starting point for understanding how cooperative behavior can be supponed in decision environments where game theory suggests it will not."
  • Working Paper
    Non-Transferable Utility Values of Voting Games
    (1987) Gardner, Roy
    "A voting game is a non-transferable utility (NTU) game with a simple game structure. When the Shapley-Shubik index of a simple game is strictly positive, then the corresponding voting game has a strict NTU value. Moreover, the Shapley-Shubik index is the unique NTU value for a certain class of voting games. These results lead to a solution of the problem of a group choosing its leader."
  • Working Paper
    The Understanding of Institutions and their Link to Resource Management from a New Institutionalism Perspective
    (2002) Haller, Tobias
    "This paper looks at the theory of the New Institutionalism and how it helps to understand livelihood strategies and institutional change in regard to resource management. This economic theory makes use of methodological individualism and looks at the role formal and informal institutions (rules, norms, values and laws) play in lowering or rising transaction costs in resource management. The paper argues that this approach is a useful tool in order to discuss livelihood strategies. The New Institutionalism looks at historic changes and at power questions (bargaining power of individuals or groups) that are so crucial in the debate on natural resource management. One of the themes useful to illustrate the position of the New Institutionalism is the debate on common property resource management where the notion of the Tragedy of the Commons can be critically questioned. This is done by showing cases where institutions work in order to regulate a sustainable use of common property resources and cases where such rules are absent or do not work (Ostrom 1990). The approach is interesting because it also focuses on the role of the state and external economic, political, demographic and technical changes and how these influence prices for goods and the terms of trade (changes in relative prices). These prices then have an influence on the local level and lead to changes in informal, local institutions, organisation, ideology and bargaining power (Ensminger 1992). In order to illustrate the approach and its use an illustrative example on the institutional changes in African floodplain wetlands is given in the paper."
  • Journal Article
    Emery Roe on Complexity: Avoiding Triangulation-Strangulation
    (2000) Bessey, K. Michael
    "Emery Roe (1998) makes a smooth segue in this collection of revised journal articles (from Transition, Ecological Economics, International Journal of Sustainable Development, World Ecology, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Economic and Political Weekly, and Environmental Management) to examine the pitfalls of one-dimensional policy analysis in a multidimensional world, and to propose triangulation as a useful alternative."
  • Conference Paper
    Discussant's Comments: Governance Stream
    (1998) Ostrom, Elinor
    (From the text): "From the set of governance panels at this conference, we carry away some important insights related both to some of the key questions with which we started the conference and the problems and puzzles addressed within the governance panels. *Fikret Berkes warned us that it was easier to predict failure than success. *Jim Scott stressed that creating uniform languages frequently created substantial benefits while at the same time increasing the capabilities of large- scale governmental and corporate control over all of our lives. *Evelyn Pinkerton urged us all to think about how issues of scale affect the design principles we can use in governing diverse commons. "A question on one of the hallway posters related to the continuum of meanings that individuals in different disciplines bring to the study of common property and asked how can we draw on and relate to these multiple languages and approaches...."
  • Conference Paper
    Where Micro meets Macro in Technology Space
    (2008) Frischmann, Brett M.; Hogendorn, Christiaan
    "We describe three key elements in economic growth models: general purpose technologies (GPTs), institutions, and infrastructure. In existing growth models, these are addressed from a very aggregate perspective, but we emphasize that their microeconomic structures are complex and often involve commons aspects. We discuss the similarities and differences between GPTs, institutions, and infrastructure from both the demand and supply side perspectives. We use that comparison to draw more specific lessons from growth models on the contributions of each of the growth drivers and the policy implications for how they can be managed."
  • Conference Paper
    Towards a Global System for Access and Benefit Sharing of Pathogen Materials
    (2012) Castro Bernieri, Rosa J.
    "A global debate has flourished on the interface between patent protection and access to biomedical technologies. Recent research suggests that an expansive trend in patent law might impede access to basic research; restrict access to medicines for low-income countries and also threaten the equitable exploitation of genetic resources by their countries of origin. The interface between access to patents and materials is particularly complex in the biomedical area, since many biotechnologies can be used either as research tools for biomedical research or as end-products; and also since the economic effects of patents are difficult to determine empirically, are spread over a long time span and are often unevenly distributed among countries. This paper looks at the problem of access and sharing of genetic resources (including those regulated by the Convention on Biological Diversity) and specifically examines the case of access and sharing of pathogen materials exemplified by the controversy on access to influenza viruses samples, which originated in Indonesia during the H5N1 influenza in 2007. The paper focuses on the global governance of pathogens access/sharing as a case that creates important concerns for global health. The paper examines global rules and institutions, which are regulating the issue in parallel, in particular the IPR system as embedded in the TRIPS Agreement, the access and benefit sharing system established in the CBD and the recently agreed Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (PIP) framework of the WHO, aiming to address access to virus samples and sharing of vaccines and other benefits."
  • Working Paper
    Common Property, Collective Action and Ecology
    (1990) Herring, Ronald J.
    "The Joint Committee on South Asia has been working for a number of years, mostly in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, on a project concerning applications of the venerable 'tragedy of the commons' model to specific instances of environmental degradation in South Asia. Several publications are in progress, focused on the case of the Sundarbans coastal ecosystem bridging India and Bangladesh. It is proposed to extend that work geographically, conceptually and theoretically in the form of a project which will involve both broader paradigmatic and methodological perspectives and integration with policy analysis. The conference in Bangalore is seen as an Intellectual extension of that work and the first stage of a larger collaboration across disciplines and resources."
  • Conference Paper
    The Spatial Model of Crisis Bargaining: An Experimental Test
    (1989) Morgan, T. Clifton; Wilson, Rick K.
    "International crises have received an increasing amount of attention in recent years from students examining the causes of war. In large part this is due to the belief that, since some crises end peacefully while others result in war, an understanding of the dynamics of crisis behavior can lead to an understanding of why wars occur. A crisis is often characterized as 'a sequence of interactions between the governments of two or more sovereign states in severe conflict, short of actual war, but involving the perception of a dangerously high probability of war'. Such a concern has led to a number of approaches to the study of crises, with many of the more recent studies aiming to develop formal theories of various aspects of crisis behavior. In general, the purpose of this growing body of literature is to use deductive models in the determination of the conditions under which crises escalate to war."