The paper is divided into four sections. First, watershed management in Haiti is presented as a problem of voluntary collective action in which small watersheds are the common responsibility of a group of users. Second, this situation is given formal expression as a "public goods" problem, in...

This essay provides a brief narrative economic history of the timber industry in Wisconsin, including details of my family's involvement in the industry. It evaluates the constraints to production, the major methods of timber harvesting, and the men and companies that dominated the trade. It...

The "global commons" is a metaphor. Metaphorically, all of the earth's resources are held in common by this and future generations, to be used and abused as we and our heirs see fit. Yet "the commons" metaphor may also be seen at a less global level, and less metaphorically. In much of the...

The paper is divided into four sections. First, watershed management in Haiti is presented as a problem of voluntary collective action in which small watersheds are the common responsibility of a group of users. Second, this situation is given formal expression as a "public goods" problem, in...

This paper has three basic purposes. The first is to review a rigorous framework for the analysis of commons dilemmas proposed by Dasgupta that avoids many basic faults of the usual apparatus. The second is to relate this analysis of the commons to models of external effects and public foods....