PA395/NR385

Valuing Common Assets for Public Finance

Spring 2008

Amos Baehr

Robert Costanza

Josh Farley

Gary Flomenhoft

Course Outline

• 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