Competition and Unitization in Oil Extraction: A Tale of Two Tragedies
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Vijay Mohan
This paper compares two organizational modes for extracting oil from a common pool: unitization and competitive extraction. The analysis suggests that the general presumption that unitization is surplus enhancing relative to competitive extraction may not always be valid due to contractual incompleteness associated with unitization contracts. While competitive extraction suffers from the tragedy of the commons, unitization can be subject to the dual tragedy of the anticommons. This provides an explanation for the puzzle confronting the oil industry that firms are often reluctant to voluntarily enter unitization agreements.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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- Paying the Price for Being Caught: The Economics of Manifest and Non-Manifest Theft in Roman Law
- Measuring Skill in Games with Random Payoffs: Evaluating Legality
- Timing of Crime, Learning and Sanction
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- Damages for Breach of Contract, Impossibility of Performance and Legal Enforceability
- Social Norms, Self-Interest and Ambiguity of Legal Norms: An Experimental Analysis of the Rule vs. Standard Dilemma
- Frischmann's View of "Toward a Theory of Property Rights"
- Causation and Incentives to Choose Levels of Care and Activity Under the Negligence Rule
- A Positive Theory of Strict Liability
- Theory Meets Practice: Barriers to Entry in Merger Analysis
- Expert Testimony, Daubert, and the Determination of Damages
- Split-Estate Negotiations: The Case of Coal-Bed Methane
- Attorneys' Compensation in Litigation with Bilateral Delegation
- The Paradox of Expected Punishment: Legal and Economic Factors Determining Success and Failure in the Fight against Organized Crime
- The Biasing Effects of Memory Distortions on the Process of Legal Decision-Making
- Transaction Costs, Neighborhood Effects, and the Diffusion of the Uniform Sales Act, 1906-47
- A Note on the Social versus Private Value of Suits when Care is Bilateral
- The Hidden Bias of the Vienna Convention on the International Law of Treaties
- Differential Victimization: Efficiency and Fairness Justifications for the Felony Murder Rule
- Underpricing of IPOs and Legal Frameworks Around the World
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- The Market for Lawyers and Social Capital: Are Informal Rules a Substitute for Formal Ones?
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