PA395/NR385
Valuing Common Assets for Public Finance
Spring 2008
Amos Baehr
Robert Costanza
Josh Farley
Gary Flomenhoft
Course Outline
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Schedule
Reading
Assignments
Grading
Writing
Education vs. Schooling
• This weeks goals
– Be able to identify specific cases of the
commons.
– Be able to place instances of enclosure on
an historic time line
– Be able to construct and use a property
categorizing continuum from open access
to monopoly
COMMONS-NATURE
COMMONS-SOCIAL
What is the Commons?
GOVERNING THE COMMONS; The
Evolution of Institutions for Collective
Action
OSTROM-p.30
Common Pool Resource: The CPR
Situation
History of the commons
• Spanish Huertas - irrigations syndicates
• Alicante
– What about longevity
– What is rent seeking
– What does it say about “local control”
Governing the Commons
• National authorities have exerted more control over irrigation matters
in Alicante than in other huertas. A large structure, like the Tibi dam,
(constructed 1594) can be seized and used as a source of revenue and
power by a rent-seeking ruler. Although Phillip ll did not attempt to
exercise control over the Tibi Dam when it was built, the dam was
transferred to royal ownership for a century in 1739. When control of
the dam and responsibility for distributing its water were returned to
Alicante in 1840, farmers did not win the right to select syndicate
officers for another 25 years. The Spanish Civil War also interrupted
the control that farmers exercised over the irrigation syndicate. It was
not until 1950 that farmers again selected their own officials.
History of Enclosure
• “The revolution of the rich against the
poor”??
• Polanyi - The Great Transformation
• CH 3 - “Habitation versus Improvement”
• Bring an event date for time line we will
construct next week
The Great Transformation
• “Enclosures were an obvious improvement if no
conversion to pasture took place. Enclosed land
was worth double and treble the unenclosed.
Where tillage was maintained, employment did
not fall off, and the food supply markedly
increased. The yield of the land manifestly
increased, especially where the land was let.”
Economic Rent
• Ricardo, The rent of land is determined by the excess of its
production over that which the same application can secure
from the least productive land in use.
• Quesnay,
• Paine,
• George, “I have shown that laissez faire - in its full, true
meaning - opens the way for us to realize the noble dreams of
socialism.” Progress and Poverty
• Mill
Assignment
• Breadth of Commons [including other
definitions as well as instances]
• History of Enclosure [event(s) for time
line]
• What is economic rent versus common
sense of rent?