The Economics of Common Pool Property

(draft article, comment and feedback welcome)

The
tragedy of the commons was a concept put forward by a biologist but Garrett Hardin’s
underlying assumptions, when he developed it, are drawn quite distinctly from
economics.   As Elinor Ostrom, who shared a Nobel Prize in economics for
her efforts in challenging the idea of the 'tragedy', noted while Hardin was a
biologist, he shared the