Published as:"The Nature of Common-Pool Resource Problems," Rationality and Society 2(3), July 1990, 335-358."A large, multidisciplinary literature focuses on the problems occurring when multiple individuals concurrently use common-pool resources such as fisheries, grazing areas, airsheds, oil...

Many analysts presume that the appropriators of a common-pool resource are trapped in a Hobbesian state of nature and cannot themselves create rules to counteract the perverse incentives they face in managing the resource. The logical consequence of this view is to recommend that an external...

This paper reconsiders the relationship between the rules of a game and its outcomes. The authors develop a notion of rule reform that leads to the selection of Pareto improved equilibria points. They then apply this notion to a series of naturally occurring fishing rules, including examples...