Harvesting the Commons

Partha Dasgupta (), Tapan Mitra and Gerhard Sorger
Additional contact information
Partha Dasgupta: University of Cambridge

Environmental & Resource Economics, 2019, vol. 72, issue 3, No 2, 613-636

Abstract: Abstract We study a socio-ecological model in which a continuum of consumers harvest a common property renewable natural resource. Markov perfect Nash equilibria of the corresponding non-cooperative game are derived and are compared with collectively optimal harvesting policies. The underlying mechanisms that drive open-access commons in our model are shaped by population size, harvesting costs, and the ecosystem’s productivity. If other things equal population is small relative to harvesting costs, unmanaged commons do not face destruction. More strikingly, they are harvested at the collectively optimal rate. Property rights do not matter in that parametric regime because the resource has no social scarcity value. However, if other things equal population is large relative to harvesting costs, open-access renewable natural resources suffer from the tragedy of the commons. Property rights matter there because the resource has a social scarcity price. The population size relative to harvesting costs at which the socio-ecological system bifurcates is an increasing function of the ecosystem’s productivity. A sudden crash in productivity, population overshoot, or decline in harvesting costs can tip an unmanaged common into ruin. The model provides a way to interpret historical and archaeological findings on the collapse of those societies that have been studied by scholars.

Keywords: Tragedy of the commons; Renewable resource; Intrinsic growth rate of resource; Human population growth; Cost of harvesting; Markov perfect Nash equilibrium (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C73 Q20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10640-018-0221-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
Working Paper: Harvesting the Commons (2016)
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:72:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s10640-018-0221-4

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

DOI: 10.1007/s10640-018-0221-4

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 ().