We examine in discrete time the management of a flow pollutant that causes damage when it crosses a fixed but unknown threshold. The manager sequentially chooses a pollution level that allows learning about the threshold, thereby improving future decisions. If crossed, damage can be reversed at...

We examine the efficiency, distributional, and environmental consequences of assigning spatial property rights to part of a spatially-connected natural resource, a situation which we refer to as partial enclosure of the commons. The model reflects on a large class of institutions and natural...

We analyze a policy experiment in an Alaskan commercial fishery that assigned a portion of an overall catch quota to a voluntary co-op, with the remainder exploited competitively by those choosing to fish independently. Unlike the individual quota system advocated by many economists, the policy...

Rent dissipation in open access fisheries is a well studied problem (Gordon 1954; Homans and Wilen 1997). Regulation is seen as a possibly remedy to the externality of entry, which eventually leads to zero profits and depressed stocks. Despite regulation, drastic declines have occurred in many...