"The common-property literature has often focused on the question of efficiency. Here we consider distributional issues instead. How should the benefits of the commons (say, a fishery) be distributed? We approach the question from the viewpoint of ownership rather than income redistribution. "A...

"What makes social-ecological systems robust? In this paper we look at the institutional configurations that affect the interactions among resources, resource users, public infrastructure providers, and public infrastructures. We propose a framework that helps to identify potential...

Published as Feeny, David, "Sub-Optimality and Transaction Costs on the Commons," in Edna Tusak Loehman and D. Marc Kilgour (eds.), Designing Institutions for Environmental and Resource Management (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar Publishing, Ltd., 1998), 124-141. "Much of the literature on the...

"While the conditions of production give some guidance to what factor groupings are desirable ceteris paribus, they do not determine the boundaries of a neoclassical firm (a legal entity with a residual claimant). Indeed, they could just as well be related to other groupings, such as...

"This paper provides an experimental analysis of bargaining under imperfect information, molded by the circumstances found in oil field unitization. The purpose of the study is two-fold. One purpose is to provide a more in-depth analysis of how information affects bargained shares and...

"Many natural resources can be effectively exploited mainly by using capital-intensive technologies. We develop a bargaining model with endogenous inside and outside options to analyze the interactions between local communities having at least some degree of informal claims over natural...

"In this paper we employ experimental economic methods to examine the effect of market structure on the use of marketable emissions permits. In particular, we ask whether firms can strategically manipulate a product market using marketable emissions permits. Subjects participate in two markets,...