In the contemporary West, pressures to more effectively reallocate water to meet growing urban and environmental demands are increasing as environmental awareness grows and climate change threatens existing water supplies. The legacy of Owens Valley raises concerns about how reallocation can...

The process of assigning property rights to land in the American Great Plains resulted in farms that were too small to be economically viable. These farms were prime contributors to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The path dependence resulting from the initial assignment of property rights on the...

We examine land reform policies and their implications for violent conflict over land and resource use in the Brazilian Amazon. We identify the protagonists (land owners and squatters), derive their incentives to use violence, and show the role of legal inconsistencies as a basis for conflict....

This article examines difficulties with bureaucratic reform for transitional economies, drawing on the American experience. Bureaucracies have incentive and performance problems that could retard economic growth in transitional economies. A remedy for a politicized corrupt bureaucracy is an...

"The purpose of this paper is to summarize some of the bargaining issues involved in collective action to address local common-pool problems and to illustrate them in three empirical cases. The importance of riming or the sequence of coalition building and the heterogeneity of the participant's...

"This paper provides new theoretical clarification and empirical evidence about relational contracts written for the exploitation of oil and gas reservoirs in the United States and Canada. To mitigate common pool losses, oil fields often are developed under unit operating agreements. These...