The tragedy of the commons in a violent world
Petros G. Sekeris
Petros G. Sekeris
This is a recently published paper (RAND July 2014).
Conclusion and contribution:
Conclusion and contribution:
- In this paper the author introduces the possibility of appropriating the resource by violent means into the standard natural resource exploitation game. In this model the unique equilibrium is exploitation when the resource is abundant and conflict when it’s scarce. That is the cooperative outcome is no longer subgame perfect.
First best solution:
Allowing for conflict:
Main findings (check the paper appendix for math proof):
Note 1:
- Earlier theoretical works have shown that the tragedy of the commons (and also all kinds of prisoner’s dilemma) may be resolved by interaction in repeated games (About this, check Folk theorems for dynamic games in these papers: Aumann and Shapley 1976, Rubinstein 1979, Fudenberg and Maskin 1986, Fudenberg, Levine and Maskin 1994.
- For examples of conflict literature, check Acemoglu, Golosov, Tsyvinski and Yared 2012, Jackson and Morelli 2009.