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Parisi, Francesco; Depoorter, Ben --- "Commons and Anticommons" [2005] ELECD 129; in Backhaus, G. Jürgen (ed), "The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics, Second Edition" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005)

Book Title: The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics, Second Edition

Editor(s): Backhaus, G. Jürgen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845420321

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: Commons and Anticommons

Author(s): Parisi, Francesco; Depoorter, Ben

Number of pages: 11

Extract:

5 Commons and anticommons
Francesco Parisi and Ben Depoorter


Commons and anticommons problems are the consequence of symmetric
structural departures from a unified conception of property, and are the con-
sequence of a lack of conformity between use and exclusion rights (Parisi et
al. 2004).

Commons and anticommons: two tragedies on common grounds
Recently, a new term has gained acceptance among law and economics
scholars of property law: the `anticommons'. The concept, first introduced by
Michelman (1982) and then made popular by Heller (1998, 1999), mirror
images in name and in fact of Hardin's (1968) well-known `tragedy of the
commons'.
In situations where multiple individuals are endowed with the privilege to
use a given resource, without a cost-effective way to monitor and constrain
each other's use, the resource is vulnerable to overuse, leading to a problem
known as the tragedy of the commons. Symmetrically, when multiple owners
hold effective rights to exclude others from a scarce resource, and no one has
an effective privilege of use, the resource might be prone to underuse, leading
to a problem known as the `tragedy of the anticommons'. As pointed out by
Buchanan and Yoon (2000), the effects of the two problems are in many
respects symmetrical.

The commons problem
If a depletable resource is open to access by more than one individual,
incentives for overutilization will emerge. As the number of individuals en-
joying free access grows larger relative to the capacity of the common resource,
overutilization will approach ...