 Ownership risk and the use of common-pool natural resourcesJérémy Laurent-Lucchetti and Marc Santugini Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2012, vol. 63, issue 2, 242-259 Abstract: It has long been recognized that the quality of property rights greatly impacts the economic development of a country and the use of its natural resources. Since Long [13], the conventional wisdom has been that ownership risk induces a firm to overuse the stock of a resource. However, the empirical evidence is mixed. In particular, Bohn and Deacon [1] find that weak property rights have an ambiguous effect on present extraction. We provide a theoretical model supporting these mixed observations in a common-pool resource environment. We show that if ownership risk includes a risk of expropriation in which the identities of the excluded firms are unknown ex ante, then the present extraction of all firms may decrease along with a higher risk of expropriation. The elasticity of demand for the resource is key in explaining the effect of ownership risk on present extraction. Keywords: Common-pool resource; Expropriation; Extraction behavior; Ownership risk; Property rights; Tragedy of the commons (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeeman:v:63:y:2012:i:2:p:242-259 DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2011.06.001 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Environmental Economics and Management is currently edited by M.A. Cole, A. Lange, D.J. Phaneuf, D. Popp, M.J. Roberts, M.D. Smith, C. Timmins, Q. Weninger and A.J. Yates More articles in Journal of Environmental Economics and Management from Elsevier |
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