Hugging Trees: Claiming de Facto Property Rights by Blockading Resource Use

Peter Burton

Environmental & Resource Economics, 2004, vol. 27, issue 2, 135-163

Abstract: This paper explores conflicts between two groups,“the industry” and “theenvironmentalists”, over whether an indivisible resource (e.g., an ancient tree) should be harvested or preserved. In a complete information war ofattrition the environmentalists' willingness to blockade harvest attemptsmay control resource use as effectively as if they held property rights. Optimal government intervention will override this ability for somebenefit/cost combinations but may augment it for other combinations.Introducing uncertainty about the environmentalists' benefits results inextended disputes and consequent lack of efficiency. Governmentintervention for welfare reasons generally reduces these efficiencylosses. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2004

Keywords: environmental protest; war of attrition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1023/B:EARE.0000017276.60009.bf (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:enreec:v:27:y:2004:i:2:p:135-163

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... al/journal/10640/PS2

DOI: 10.1023/B:EARE.0000017276.60009.bf

Access Statistics for this article

Environmental & Resource Economics is currently edited by Ian J. Bateman

More articles in Environmental & Resource Economics from Springer, European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().