Showing papers on "Excludability published in 2011"

Collective Action and the Urban Commons

Abstract: Urban residents share access to a number of local resources in which they have a common stake. These resources range from local streets and parks to public spaces, to a variety of shared neighborhood amenities. Collectively shared urban resources suffer from the same rivalry and free-riding problems that Garrett Hardin described in his Tragedy of the Commons tale. Scholars have not yet worked up a theory about how this "tragedy" unfolds in the urban context, particularly in light of existing government regulation and control of common urban resources. This Article argues that the tragedy of the urban commons unfolds during periods of "regulatory slippage"--when the level of local government oversight and management of the resource significantly declines, leaving the resource vulnerable to expanded access by competing users and uses. Overuse or unrestrained competition in the use of these resources can quickly lead to congestion, rivalry, and resource degradation. Tales abound in cities across the country of streets, parks, and vacant land that were once thriving urban spaces but have become overrun, dirty, prone to criminal activity, and virtually abandoned by most users. Proposed solutions to the rivalry, congestion, and degradation that afflict common urban resources typically track the traditional public-private dichotomy of governance approaches. These solutions propose either a more assertive central government role or privatization of the resource. Neither of these proposed solutions has taken root, I argue, because of the potential costs that each carry--costs to the local government during times of fiscal strain, costs to communities where the majority of residents are non-property owners, and costs to internal community governance. What has taken root, however, are various forms of cooperative management regimes by groups of users. Despite the robust literature on self-organized management of natural resources, scholars have largely ignored collective action in the urban context. In fact, many urban scholars have assumed that collective action is unlikely in urban communities where social disorder exists. This Article highlights the ways in which common urban resources are being managed by groups of users in the absence of government coercion or management and without transferring ownership into private hands. This collective action occurs in the shadow of continued state and local government ownership and oversight of the resources. Formally, although the state continues to hold the regulatory reigns, in practice we see the public role shifting away from a centralized governmental role to what I call an "enabling" one in which state and local governments provide incentives and lend support to private actors who are able to overcome free-riding and coordination problems to manage collective resources. This Article develops this enabling role, marks its contours and limits, and raises three normative concerns that have gone unattended by policymakers. INTRODUCTION Urban residents share access to a number of local tangible and intangible resources in which they have a common stake. These resources range from local streets and parks to public spaces to a variety of shared neighborhood amenities. These collectively shared urban resources--what I call "urban commons"--are subject to the same rivalry and free-rider problems that Garrett Hardin wrote about in his Tragedy of the Commons tale. In this classic tale, Hardin warned of the depletion of open-access natural resources where it is difficult to exclude potential users who lack incentives to conserve or sustainably use the resource. (1) Many collectively shared, open-access urban resources have much in common with Hardin's conception of the "pasture open to all" prone to overuse or misuse if improperly managed or regulated. (2) The urban "commons" generally shares with traditional public goods both a lack of rivalry in consumption (nonrivalrous) and lack of excludability in access to and enjoyment of their benefits (nonexcludable). …

Commonisation and decommonisation: Understanding the processes of change in the Chilika Lagoon, India

Abstract: This article examines the processes of change in a large lagoon system, and its implications for how commons can be managed as commons in the long run. We use two related concepts in our analysis of change: commonisation and decommonisation; 'commonisation' is understood as a process through which a resource gets converted into a jointly used resource under commons institutions that deal with excludability and subtractability, and 'decommonisation' refers to a process through which a jointly used resource under commons institutions loses these essential characteristics. We analyse various contributing issues and dynamics associated with the processes of commonisation and decommonisation. We consider evidence collected through household and village level surveys, combined with a host of qualitative and quantitative research methods in the Chilika Lagoon, the largest lagoon in India, and one of the largest lagoons in Asia. We suggest that in order to keep the Chilika commons as commons will require, as a starting point, a policy environment in which legal rights and customary livelihoods are respected. With international prawn markets stabilised and the 'pink gold rush' over, the timing may be good for a policy change in order to create a political space for negotiation and to reverse the processes causing decommonisation. Fishers need to be empowered to re-connect to their environment and re-invent traditions of stewardship, without which there will be no resources left to fight over.

Conditions for Value Creation in the Marketplace Through the Management of CSR Issues: A Negative External Effects Framework:

Abstract: This article contributes to research on strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) by detailing the condition-sets governing the emergence of market-led demand for CSR. We build on external effects theory to evaluate the strategic options a company can adopt to manage its negative external effects in a way that creates social and economic value. We draw on the economic concepts of rivalry and excludability to categorize different social issues and detail the conditions needed to foster market-led transactions on negative externalities. We demonstrate how different types of negative externalities present firms with different strategic opportunities in terms of harnessing market-driven CSR demand.

Market mechanisms for financing the reduction of emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries (REDD) – learning from payments for ecosystem services schemes

Abstract: At its 16th session in Cancun, the Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change decided on a framework for implementing the reduction of deforestation and degradation (REDD). This global compensation mechanism for the ecosystem services, such as carbon storage and sequestration by forests in the developing countries, however, left critical details untouched regarding future REDD negotiations. Among others, the question of how to design a proper financing mechanism for the final phase of REDD implementation remains. This article reviews theoretical approaches on payments for ecosystem service schemes and provides recommendations for future negotiations on funding REDD mechanisms. Of special interest is the classification of forest ecosystem services according to physical and economic characteristics, rivalry and excludability, scale and directional flow. These characteristics help to determine which kind of funding mechanism should be set up at the global scale. Carbon...

The firm as a common. The case of accumulation and use of common resources in mutual benefit organizations

Abstract: Common resources are quasi-public resources, which are rivaled but non excludable in consumption or in appropriation. While the exploitation of common resources has been widely studied in the literature originated by Elinor Ostroni?½s works (starting from 1990), the study of common resources inside entrepreneurial organization in not sufficiently developed to date. This paper establishes three dimensions that highlight the relevance of the communality of resources in entrepreneurial organizations: the accumulation and use of common capital resources owned by the organization; the distribution of a rivaled, but non excludable value added among the controlling patrons; and the management of common non-owned resources (for example natural resources) by the organization. The first theme is selected and developed further. Cooperative firms are introduced are instance of ownership form that appears, historically and institutionally, to be particularly keen to accumulate, use, distribute common resources.

Data Games: Sharing Public Goods with Exclusion

Abstract: A group of firms decides to cooperate on a project that requires a combination of inputs held by some of them. These inputs are non-rival but excludable goods i.e. public goods with exclusion such as knowledge, data or information, patents or copyrights. We address the question of how firms should be compensated for the inputs they contribute. We show that this problem can be framed within a cost sharing game for which the Shapley value comes out as a natural solution. The main result concerns the regular structure of the core that enables a simple characterization of the nucleolus. However, compared to the Shapley value, the nucleolus defines compensations that appear to be less appropriate in the context of data sharing. Our analysis is inspired by the problem faced by the European chemical firms within the regulation program REACH that requires submission by 2018 of a detailed analysis of all the substances they produce, import or use.

Secure Implementation in Discrete and Excludable Plublic Good Economies

Abstract: This paper studies secure implementability [Saijo, T., T. Sjöström, and T.Yamato (2007), “Secure Implementation,” Theoretical Economics 2, pp.203-229] on the provision of one discrete and excludable public good with cost shares. Our main result shows that only constant social choice functions are securely implementable in standard quasi-linear environments.

The circulation of ideas in firms and markets

Abstract: Novel early stage ideas face uncertainty on the expertise needed to elaborate them, which creates a need to circulate them widely to find a match. Yet as information is not excludable, shared ideas may be stolen, reducing incentives to innovate. Still, in idea-rich environments inventors may share them without contractual protection. Idea density is enhanced by firms ensuring rewards to inventors, while their legal boundaries limit idea leakage. As firms limit idea circulation, the innovative environment involves a symbiotic interaction: firms incubate ideas and allow employees leave if they cannot find an internal fit; markets allow for wide ideas circulation of ideas until matched and completed; under certain circumstances ideas may be even developed in both firms and markets.

Strategy-Proof Rules for an Excludable Public Good

Abstract: We consider a mechanism design problem for the provision of a binary excludable public good. We characterize the augmented serial rules [Ohseto (2005)] by strategy-proofness, envy-freeness, and access independence. This result is the positive answer to the first question left by Ohseto (2005). We also show that there exists a rule satisfying strategy-proofness, symmetry, access independence, and nonbossiness, other than the augmented serial rules. This result is the negative answer to the second question left by Ohseto (2005).

Some Insights on Religion from Public Goods Economics

Abstract: This paper provides a theoretical discussion on what analytical insight is gained by viewing religion as both a pure and impure public good. It suggests that organized religion converts a public good into an excludable club good and can be viewed as providing both an access regime for this club good as well as acting as an intermediary. Interestingly, this drives a wedge between the ardent and moderate adherents of a religion. It also presents an analysis of trust in social relationships when organized religion works to provide a credible signal of trustworthiness.

Corrigendum: Optimal Provision of Multiple Excludable Public Goods

Abstract: In Fang and Norman (2010), we incorrectly represented Case 2 in Table 1 (p. 21). The inequality in defining Case 2 should have been a ≤ (less than or equal to). We apologize for our mistake. ReFeReNCes Fang, Hanming, and Peter Norman. 2010. “Optimal Provision of Multiple excludable Public Goods.” American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2(4): 1–37. Corrigendum: Optimal Provision of Multiple Excludable Public Goods By Hanming Fang and Peter Norman