Commons, anti-commons, corruption and 'maffia' behavior

The particular point that will be stressed in this paper is that benefits derived from corrupt behaviour depend on institutions devised to discourage it. The analytical framework used to explore the symmetric tragedies of the commons and the anticommons outlined by James Buchaman and Yong J. Yoon (2000) is useful to deal with the study of the relationship between institutions and corruption. A simple game theoretic model is built to show that corruption produces a tragedy of the anticommons and it can be discouraged by the introduction of competition among corrupt agents to turn it into a tragedy of the commons. It is also shown that coordinated corruption or 'maffia' behaviour produces a better use of resources than uncoordinated corruption.