Natural resources, agriculture and property rights

Abstract

The study explores empirically forest resource and soil quality degradation under different property rights regimes in a subsistence agriculture framework. The quantitative analysis is a direct test of the theoretical hypothesis of Larson and Bromley (1990) [Larson, B., Bromley, D., 1990. Property rights, externalities, and resource degradation: locating the tragedy. Journal of Development Economics 33 (2).] that common property and private property rights may lead to similar incentives for resource protection. A household model is formulated and applied empirically with data from Indonesia to test rates of forest biomass and soil quality degradation under private and common property rights. Results show that the two regimes may equal each other by including bequest value. Sensitivity analysis is conducted by changing model parameters.