Institutions,governance and incentives in common property regimes for African rangelands

The general distinctions between open access, state property, common property and private property are now well established in the academic literature. When applied to African rangelands, however, common property admits a wide variety of resource management regimes. To formulate effective policies it is necessary to understand the structure and operations of particular regimes. In this paper we discuss three examples of common property regimes, two from the southern African nation of Lesotho and one from the west African nation of Senegal, to illustrate some of the key characteristics of common property regimes. In particular, it is important to understand the structure of governance, the types of institutions that govern behavior, and the compatibility between governance, institutions and individual incentives. A common property regime can only be effective if its institutions are compatible with the structure of governance. The extent of its effectiveness also depends upon the incentives and expectations of individuals expected to enforce the rules of the institutions or comply with their terms. At present, most African governments lack the organizational capacity and political will necessary to implement state property regimes, official regulations on resource use, or individual property rights for rangelands resources. In many cases it is more appropriate for governments to define and enforce group rights to particular resources, then help to establish conditions in which internal group dynamics yield efficient resource management outcomes.     

Experimental results on bargaining under alternatives property rights regimes

The effect of alternative property rights regimes on the choicebetween taking an object and acquiring it via a consensual exchangeis experimentally explored in a two-period screening game. Resultsare generally consistent with equilibrium predictions, suggestingthat property rights regimes have a significant impact on observedbehavior.     

Endogenous growth and property rights over renewable resources

We study how different regimes of access rights to renewable natural resources – namely open access versus full property rights – affect sustainability, growth and welfare in the context of modern endogenous growth theory. Resource exhaustion may occur under both regimes but is more likely to arise under open access. Moreover, under full property rights, positive resource rents increase expenditures on manufacturing goods and temporarily accelerate productivity growth, but also yield a higher resource price at least in the short-to-medium run. We characterize analytically and quantitatively the model׳s dynamics to assess the welfare implications of differences in property rights enforcement.     

Property rights on First Nations reserve land

This paper examines the economic effects of existing private property rights on First Nations reserves. We focus on three regimes of land tenure: lawful possession, designated land and permits. These land regimes have been used to create individual landholdings and grant secure and transferable rights of use of reserve land. Using confidential census microdata and rich administrative data, we find evidence of a positive relationship between the use of these tenure regimes and homeownership rates, housing conditions and band's public spending. We also observe a positive relationship with average income. However, this last result is driven by the inflow of a non-Indigenous population not by improvements in Indigenous households’ income or on-reserve employment. Our findings thus suggest that while reforms to individual property rights on reserve have some positive effects, their scope remains limited and they are unlikely to constitute a transformative tool to alleviate poverty on reserve.     

Property Rights and Natural Resource Conservation. A Bio-Economic Model with Numerical Illustrations from the Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem

This study develops a model for wildlifemigrating seasonally between a conservationarea and a neighbouring area. When beingoutside the conservation area, harvesting takesplace by a group of small-scale farmers. Thelocal people have two motives for harvesting;to get rid of ``problem' animals as roamingwildlife destroys crops and agriculturalproducts, and hunting for meat and trophies.Depending on the specification of the propertyrights, the harvesting is legal or illegal. Itis demonstrated that it is far from clear whichof the two property rights regimes that givesthe highest wildlife abundance. Hence, contraryto what is argued for in the literature,handing the property rights over to the localpeople means not automatically more wildlifeand a more ``sustainable' resource utilization.The reason lies in the nuisance motive forharvesting. The exploitation under the twodifferent property rights regimes areillustrated by numerical calculations with datathat fits reasonable well with the exploitationof the wildebeest population in theSerengeti-Mara ecosystem.     

Endogenous institutional change after independence

Independence from colonial rule was a key event for both political and economic reasons. We argue that newly independent countries often inherited sub-optimal institutional arrangements, which the new regimes reacted to in very different ways. We present a model of endogenous changes in property rights institutions where an autocratic post-colonial elite faces a basic trade-off between stronger property rights, which increases the dividends from the modern sector, and weaker property rights that increases the elite's ability to appropriate resource rents. The model predicts that revenue-maximizing regimes in control of an abundance of resource rents and with insignificant interests in the modern sector will rationally install weak institutions of private property, a prediction which we argue is well in line with the experience of several developing countries.     

Organizational forms in the knowledge economy: a comparative institutional analysis

This paper provides a framework with which to analyze organizational forms in the knowledge economy. We focus on an important trade-off facing modern firms: firms can acquire the property of all the innovations developed by their employees and can greatly increase their profits, yet this type of private intellectual property rights regime can discourage the innovative effort of the very same workers. Allowing workers to carry their knowledge outside the firm eliminates this disincentive. Hence, strategic complementarities may exist between innovative partners and a disclosure driven intellectual property rights regime, and passive employees and a private intellectual property rights regime. An evolutionary game theoretic model demonstrates these strategic complementarities and shows when economies tend towards disclosure driven or private intellectual property rights regimes.     

会计准则保护产权的"马太效应"研究--来自近代西方历史的回顾与企业所有权理论的分析

在保护小股东的产权方面,中国会计准则曾一度被寄予厚望,但是结果却并不尽如人意。这很大程度上缘于我们缺乏对会计准则保护小股东产权的作用机理,以及会计准则产权保护功能发挥所需要的条件的分析。文章通过对英国、荷兰和美国建立产权法律保护体系的历史回顾,以及从企业所有权理论的角度对会计准则保护产权的作用途径进行分析,提出了会计准则与产权保护之间的基本关系———会计准则是产权法律保护体系的重要组成部分,但同时对产权保护又具有“马太效应”。这一理论对于理解中国会计准则具有深刻的含义。     

Smallholder timber sale decisions on the Amazon frontier

We use data from a survey of 2401 households living along the Transamazon highway to study timber sales decisions of smallholders settling in Amazon native forests. We develop an econometric approach, to study both the decision to harvest timber and the volume of timber sold, that corrects for limited access to loggers leading to possible selection bias, incomplete labor markets, and differences in property rights regimes that characterize the area. We find that, irrespective of distance to markets, smallholders that have either been settled by INCRA or have access to credit are more likely to sell wood, but those with outside income sources are less likely to sell. Higher timber prices decrease the likelihood of timber sales. The results suggest that timber sales are viewed only as a means for smallholders to reduce immediate cash constraints. With some exceptions these results hold across property rights regimes.     

Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights, North-South Trade, and Biological Diversity

In the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement of GATT (1 January 1995) it was agreed to harmonise intellectual property rights (IPR) on an international level and to include the option for patent protection for all life forms such as plants and animals (Article 27 (3) b). Patenting, however, leads to considerable conflicts between international trade and protection of biological diversity, which can be illustrated by the example of seed production. We make use of a three-stage game to show the strategic incentives for implementation of two different property rights regimes (patents and farmers' rights) on competition and biodiversity. We show that the Southern government has no incentive to acknowledge international patents, even if farmers' rights do exist. The Northern producer will always dominate in the output market if patents are applied, but without farmers' rights biodiversity will not be maintained by the Southern government. Thus total payoff of the northern firm is maximized, if both IPR regimes are implemented. However, if only farmers' rights are valid, biodiversity will be maximal.     

Endogenous property rights regimes, common-pool resources and trade

A model is developed where opening to trade affects a dynamic common-pool resource stock and welfare through a community's voting decision to institute a property rights regime regulating the stock. The model finds that resource stock levels can decline even when a Markov perfect equilibrium path for labor and property rights regimes are chosen to maximize welfare. Thus, opening to trade can be welfare maximizing even when resource stock declines. Experimental results show that under certain conditions, subjects briefly follow a Markov perfect equilibrium path for property rights regime choice but labor allocations are myopically chosen indicating that some resource dynamics may be considered by subjects.     

Willingness to Pay for Forest Property Rights and the Value of Increased Property Rights Security

This paper studies the willingness to pay (WTP) for forest property rights in Viet Nam. We do so by asking respondents to estimate the value of two different forest property rights regimes where only the level of property security differs and all other forest plot characteristics are constant. We use this information to identify the value of the property rights security. Our results reveal that a significant number of individuals are willing to pay for an additional area of forestland but that the amount offered appears to be inadequate to compensate sellers, as very few land market transactions actually take place. The results further indicate that income relates positively to WTP, irrespective of forest property regime. Wealth, age, and ethnicity also have an impact on the amount households are willing to pay. As expected, there was a significant mark-up on the more secure right. Econometric estimates of the difference between the WTP for secure and insecure property rights show that a higher level of female education, and household age decrease the difference between the two WTP measures while the difference tends to increase as income improves. This has important policy implications, as it indicates that households tend to evaluate the property rights institutions differently.     

Coming to the Nuisance: An Economic Analysis from an Incomplete Contracts Perspective

We construct a model in which an investment opportunity arisesfor a first mover before it knows the identity of a second moverand in which joint location results in a negative externality.Contracts are inherently incomplete since the first mover cannotbargain over its ex ante investment decision with the anonymoussecond mover. Given this departure from the setting of the Coasetheorem, the allocation of property rights over the externalityhas real effects on social welfare. We investigate the relativeefficiency of property rights regimes used in practice: injunctions,damages, the ruling in the Spur Industries case, etc. The firstbest can be obtained by allocating property rights (in particularthe right to sue for damages) to the second mover. Allocatingproperty rights to the first mover, as a "coming to the nuisance"rule entails, leads to overinvestment. In contrast to conventionalwisdom, this inefficiency persists even if a monopoly landownercontrols all the land on which the parties may locate.     

Property Regimes as Information Regimes: Efficiency and Economies of Joint Production

The paper argues that it is useful to view property regimes asinformation regimes. A conceptual model and numerical example are usedto show that, under some reasonable assumptions, a common propertyregime is preferable to a private property regime when property regimesare viewed as information regimes. The paper considers a case ofidiosyncratic risk in a dynamic grazing context where the marginality ofthe resource is such that insurance markets are thin or non-existent.Agents are thought to be risk averse and exogenous enforcement of a risksharing scheme is not feasible. The policy implication is that theestablishment and maintenance of a common property regime is shown to bea (possibly) reasonable institutional response in the face of difficultand particular circumstances when property regimes are viewed asinformation regimes.     

论农业企业化经营

本文首先给出了农业企业的内涵,指出了实行企业经营的意义。然后,分析了农业企业经营形式,并以实现土地流转集中的土地产权制度的安排为基础,按企业的经营规模和产品商品化程度,提出了五种实现企业化经营的支撑体系作了框架性说明。     

Intellectual Property Rights and Crop-Improving R&D under Adaptive Destruction

This paper studies how the strength of intellectual property rights (IPRs) affects investments in biological innovations when the value of an innovation is stochastically reduced to zero because of the evolution of pest resistance. We frame the problem as a research and development (R&D) investment game in a duopoly model of sequential innovation. We characterize the incentives to invest in R&D under two competing IPR regimes, which differ in their treatment of the follow-on innovations that become necessary because of pest adaptation. Depending on the magnitude of the R&D cost, ex ante firms might prefer an intellectual property regime with or without a “research exemption” provision. The study of the welfare function that also accounts for benefit spillovers to consumers—which is possible analytically under some parametric conditions, and numerically otherwise—shows that the ranking of the two IPR regimes depends critically on the extent of the R&D cost.      

Access to an Essential Facility: Efficient Component Pricing Rule or Unrestricted Private Property Rights?

In this paper, we compare the access to an essential facility in two different property rights regimes. In the first, the owner of the facility has an unrestricted private property right of the essential facility. In the second, access is regulated according to the efficient component pricing rule. Proponents of the second regime claim that this rule is efficient, for it forecloses the complementary market only to inefficient producers. We prove that, as far as entry is concerned, the two legal frameworks are equivalent if we do not consider the possibility of the transfer of the property right, and that if this is allowed the efficient component pricing rule might exclude efficient suppliers.     

A policy spectrum for spectrum economics

Recent reforms to radio spectrum regulation have sparked controversy over the respective merits of two mutually exclusive liberalization regimes: property rights and commons. This debate is restrictive because it is largely incomplete and misunderstood. It is also costly in terms of opposition and delays to reforms. Goals of efficient spectrum allocation are better served by a wider policy toolkit, inclusive of hybrid and intermediary regimes. In this article I sketch the contours of a ‘spectrum of spectrum regimes’, triangulating regulatory, private ownership and unlicensed approaches. I illustrate this triangulated model, which I then apply to confront allocative decisions in digital dividend policy, such as the FCC’s open access clause in the 700 MHz auction and Ofcom’s current review of UHF spectrum release in the 800 MHz band.     

Spontaneous (non)emergence of property rights

The paper analyses preferences of private owners over the degree of property rights protection. It is shown that inequality in resource ownership and/or relative inefficiency of production technologies could make wealthier agents favour less than full protection of property rights. If such agents control the choice of a property rights regime, fully secured property rights will not emerge from the grassroots. This conclusion is consistent with the failure to create an efficient property rights system in Russia.     

POLITICS AND THE NEW RESOURCE ECONOMICS

Two competing theories generally used, at least implicitly, to justify and analyze public resource management are scientific management and pluralism. We briefly review these theories and compare them to the new resource economics, an emerging body of theory which revises resource economics by introducing concepts from Austrian economics, property rights theory, and public choice. We argue that the new resource economics is superior to these traditional theories and then present specific policy proposals for the national forests, wilderness areas, and the public grazing lands. We also criticize new resource economists for not clearly distinguishing ideology from science, for emphasizing efficiency as a criterion for policy analysis, and for lacking political strategies for implementing their proposals