Home Never Two Without Three: Commons, Anticommons and Semicommons
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Never Two Without Three: Commons, Anticommons and Semicommons

  • Enrico Bertacchini , Jef P.B. De Mot and Ben Depoorter
Published/Copyright: April 10, 2009
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

A semicommons regime exists when the efficient use of a resource requires the co-existence of both common and private uses. In a seminal article, Henry Smith examined the system of semicommons property in regard to medieval open fields. In such a system, peasants shared common land for collective grazing, but used privately owned scattered strips for grain growing. This paper provides the first formal model of semicommons property regimes. Our model demonstrates (1) how the costs of strategic behavior in semicommons regimes may outweigh those in commons regimes and (2) how semicommons regimes may solve collective action problems by introducing anticommons arrangements. We extend previous property literature by offering new insights as to conditions in which mixed property regimes emerge and fragmentation solutions are favored.

Published Online: 2009-4-10

©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Article
  2. Macroeconomic Instability and Corporate Failure: The Role of the Legal System
  3. Prevention of Crime and the Optimal Standard of Proof in Criminal Law
  4. Does a Rise in Maximal Fines Increase or Decrease the Optimal Level of Deterrence?
  5. Benchmarks and Economic Analysis
  6. Pass a Law, Any Law, Fast! State Legislative Responses to the Kelo Backlash
  7. The Problem of Shared Social Cost
  8. A Cost of Tax Planning
  9. Never Two Without Three: Commons, Anticommons and Semicommons
  10. Unavoidable Accident
  11. Protecting Private Property with Constitutional Judicial Review: A Social Welfare Approach
  12. Measuring Criminal Spillovers: Evidence from Three Strikes
  13. Corruption on the Court: The Causes and Social Consequences of Point-Shaving in NCAA Basketball
  14. Valuation of Quality of Life Losses Associated with Nonfatal Injury: Insights from Jury Verdict Data
  15. Belief in a Just World, Blaming the Victim, and Hate Crime Statutes
  16. Do Citizens Know Whether Their State Has Decriminalized Marijuana? Assessing the Perceptual Component of Deterrence Theory
  17. The Structure of Incremental Liability Rules
  18. Firms' Motivations for Environmental Overcompliance
  19. Contingent Fees, Signaling and Settlement Authority
  20. Rethinking the Economic Model of Deterrence: How Insights from Empirical Social Science Could Affect Policies Towards Crime and Punishment
  21. Crime, Business Conduct and Investment Decisions: Enterprise Survey Evidence from 34 Countries in Europe and Asia
  22. Additive and Non-Additive Risk Factors in Multiple Causation
  23. The Devil Made Me Do It: The Corporate Purchase of Insurance
  24. Factors Affecting the Length of Time a Jury Deliberates: Case Characteristics and Jury Composition
  25. Hybrid Licensing of Product Innovations
  26. The Effect of Endogenous Right-to-Work Laws on Business and Economic Conditions in the United States: A Multivariate Approach
  27. The Choice in the Lawmaking Process: Legal Transplants vs. Indigenous Law
  28. Building Encroachments
  29. Reporter's Privilege and Incentives to Leak
  30. Decision Analysis on Whether to Accept a Remittitur
  31. Deterrence in Rank-Order Tournaments
  32. Self-Defeating Subsidiarity
  33. Do Broader Eminent Domain Powers Increase Government Size?
Downloaded on 19.11.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.2202/1555-5879.1312/pdf
Scroll to top button