Distributing the Benefits from the Commons: A Square-Root Formula.

What should be the distribution of the benefits of a fishery (or common-pool resource) where a group of fishers catch fish and sell it to consumers? The author proposes that, for each person i, where i is a fisher or a consumer, i's returns should be proportional to i's contributions. Unexpectedly, this implies that the fraction of benefits accruing to consumers must be equal to the square root of the value of total output of fish divided by (the square root of the value of total outputs of fish plus the square root of the value of total fishers' labor). Copyright 1998 by The editors of the Scandinavian Journal of Economics.