================= HES POSTING ================= Pat, Well, Garrett Hardin's influential article appeared in the early 1960s. It drew in turn from the 1954 article in the Journal of Political Economy by H. Scott Gordon, "Economic Theory of a Common-Property Resource." That dealt with the problem of overharvesting of fisheries and is used in many environmental econ textbooks as a paradigmatic example of a certain kind of externality, although neither that article nor Hardin's used that term. It has since become known that the relevant issue in question is that of open versus limited access and that "common property" owners may well be able to institute regimes to control or limit access. Dan Bromley of this list has written extensively and authoritatively on this topic. A key early paper on this was Ciriacy-Wantrup, S.V. and Richard C. Bishop, "'Common Property' as a Concept in Natural Resources Policy," _Natural Resources Journal_, 1975, vol. 15, pp. 713-727. Barkley Rosser ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]