| Resources used "in common" have long been said to be overexploited and mismanaged. Whether it be fisheries, grazing land, oil and gas pools, groundwater, or wildlife, group use has been blamed for resource misallocation. This is a simplification, since one must acknowledge at least two types of group use situations: open access and common property. Open access refers to resource utilization without any controls on extraction rates, a situation in which resource overexploitation often occurs. "Common property" is a term that, for historical reasons and due to property rights arguments, ought to be reserved for group use in which extraction rates are controlled.;To meet the first objective, two chapters develop the theoretical details of open access and common property resource utilization. In addition, a full chapter is devoted to a case study of true common property in alpine grazing lands of Switzerland. Rights systems, operating structures, management tools, governance and decision-making, and history are discussed.;To explore the second objective, empirical work was conducted to compare the performance of common property grazing with private property grazing in Switzerland. Average milk production, as a proxy for grazed condition, was compared between commons and private grazing, controlling econometrically for natural factors that might affect milk production. It was found that milk productivity was lower under common property grazing. A second result was that grazing pressure under common property was lower than under private property. These results likely indicate underinvestment in improvements to common lands.;The results may give guarded support to the position that group use, even under controlled conditions, leads to poorer resource utilization. This conclusion is not definitive, however, because costs were ignored. It is still likely that certain conditions exist under which only common property can perform adequately. Further work to resolve the cost question is called for.;This dissertation has two main objectives: (1) to make the distinction between open access and common property clear, and (2) to test the adequacy of resource allocation under true common property. |
