Theoretical Contributions

A number of factors affect the ability of a group of individuals or community members to undertake collective action, whether to create public goods or to avoid public bads. In matters of natural resource management, which serves as the main illustration used by this research project, public good production typically consists of constructing and maintaining collective infrastructures as well as creating organisations in charge of managing local-level resources (setting rules, detecting violations, inflicting punishments, etc). As for avoiding public bads, it refers to self-restraint behaviour on the part of users so as to conserve the resource over time and minimize rent dissipation. Among the determinants of collective action ability, group size, heterogeneity of group members and availability of exit opportunities receive special attention. In particular, the impact of inequality on the efficiency of management of village resources is analysed through the use of standard tools of modern microeconomic theory. This is done in the context of both a decentralized framework of interactions between resource users and a cooperative framework in which users can make binding commitments.