Industrial grain production, driven by large-scale monoculture and intensive use of synthetic inputs, has become a cornerstone of global food systems. However, its environmental, social, and economic sustainability is increasingly called into question. The depletion of soil health, biodiversity...

Human cooperation is ubiquitous and instinctive. We are among the most cooperative species on Earth. Still, research mostly focuses on why we cooperate, instead of understanding why some of us do not do so. The public goods game can be used to map human cooperation as well as to study free...

This paper posits that what has been currently understood as a new return of industrial policies is actually a vague and rhetorical usage of the notion, as the current framework lacks the proper understanding of industrial policies as instruments to firstly, orient the rate and direction of...

Many developing countries depend crucially on open-access renewable natural resources (NR). Trade is generally viewed as hurting the long-term health of NR in commodity-exporting countries. I examine whether trade might be beneficial in the case of population growth. Dynamic general equilibrium...

This paper revisits the Tragedy of the Commons - a Pareto-dominated overuse of a common resource - through the lenses of Stoicism, and, in particular, of the Stoic discipline of desires, according to which one should wish for nothing that is not under one's control. When the Stoic discipline of...

The present work is a collection of essays. The first one is new, written for the collection. Then follows 7 separate essays of varying age. They are named * On the classifications of property rights * A property rights perspective on institutional change in the welfare state * On the nature of...

Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) - a range of methods to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere- are a crucial innovation in meeting temperature targets set by international climate agreements. However, mechanisms which undo the adverse consequences of short-sighted actions (as NETs)...

Exploitation of natural resources such as oil and gas fields, coal and water basins are very important in the economic growth of countries. The importance of this issue for countries, especially the common natural resources, is twofold. Exploitation of common resources between countries is of...

The rise of Global China or the rapid expansion of Chinese influence abroad has had a commensurate impact on transnational trade and related commercial pressure in the governance of natural resources in Africa. Rosewood with its direct link to China's cultural renaissance has had a boost in...

Many developing countries depend crucially on open-access renewable natural resources (NR). Trade is generally viewed as hurting the long-term health of NR in commodity-exporting countries. I examine whether trade might be beneficial in the case of population growth. Dynamic general equilibrium...

In this study, we provide causal evidence on the capacity of monetary incentives to encourage real-life local leaders managing water and land to improve their procedural fairness. We report results from incentivized decisions and surveys conducted with local leaders in rural Namibia (n=64) and...

This paper presents a first conceptualization for decentralized project delivery through the combination of blockchain technology and common pool resource governance theory, also known as the "crypto commons". While previous literature on project delivery models identifies the use of...

Open data has been heralded as bringing great benefits to businesses and individuals alike in the EU, enabling the emergence of a data agile Europe and a society empowered by data. However, such arrangements are far from being free of disadvantages, especially for the citizens of smart cities....

"Most histories of economic life explore how markets are built. This book looks instead at how they have been dismantled. Soon after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, they began the process of transforming the economy, and indeed all of society, in accordance with communist ideology....

How can we overcome the existing political, economic, and ecological crises that humanity faces? With the notion of the commons, Lukas Peter argues that this form of social organization can provide answers to the shortcomings of centralized states and open and competitive markets. By building on...

The two questions I seek to address in these pages are what is public property and why does it matter. Public property, like property more generally, is a powerful legal arrangement of allocating control and use rights with respect to resources. Unlike private property, public property does not...

Commons problems present behavioral dilemmas, with tensions between individual and collective rationality. When users of a common-pool resource are not effectively excluded, the collective behavior of individuals pursuing their self-interests dissipates resource rents. We derive a non-parametric...

Co-Cities by Sheila Foster and Christian Iaione (MIT Press, 2022) is a tour de force. They provide a rigorous empirical analysis of more than 200 global cities, and over 500 case studies within those metropolises, to reconceptualize “the city” for the contemporary age. (p. 24) While many...

The inefficiencies of common property fisheries are well-known to economists. To avoid over-exploitation, they propose multiple forms of government solution such as taxes, quotas and the enforcement of property rights regimes designed to avoid over-harvesting. But can efficient arrangements also...

This field study investigates the characteristics and preferences of artisanal fishers who continue their profession in a lake afflicted by overfishing. We relate their economic preferences, fishing data, social networks, and socio-demographic information to their decision to either persist or...

The inter-temporal resource allocation efficiency of a rights-based common-pool resource management system is threatened by a stock externality when one user’s extraction lowers the resource stock and raises the extraction cost for others. This paper proposes a novel decentralized rights-based...

Incomplete property rights are common across a range of natural resources such as fisheries and groundwater. The High Plains Aquifer region of Kansas provides one example of a complex but incomplete system of property rights. Rights to groundwater in Kansas are incomplete due to the physical...

From public lands to beaches and to data, our society is rich with resources purposefully kept in the public domain. Common resources provide profound economic, social, and democratic value to individuals, communities, and society as a whole. These, however, depend on the public’s ability to...