Private and Common Property Rights

Abstract

The relative advantages of private property and common property for the efficiency, equity, and sustainability of natural resource use patterns have been debated in legal and economic literatures for several centuries. The debate has been clouded by a troika of confusions that relate to the difference between (1) common property and open-access regimes, (2) common-pool resources and common property regimes, and (3) a resource system and the flow of resource units. A property right is an enforceable authority to undertake particular actions in specific domains. The rights of access, withdrawal, management, exclusion and alienation can be separately assigned to different individuals as well as being viewed as a cumulative scale moving from the minimal right of access through possessing full ownership rights. All of these rights may be held by single individuals or by collectivities. Some attributes of common-pool resources are conducive to the use of communal proprietorship or ownership and others are conducive to individual rights to withdrawal, management, exclusion and alienation. Many of the lessons learned from the operation of communal property regimes related to natural resource systems are theoretically relevant to the understanding of a wide diversity of property regimes that are extensively used in modern societies. JEL classification: K1, Q2, H4, D7