"Common Property" as a Concept in Natural Resources Policy * 1

Institutions based on the concept "common property" have played socially beneficial roles in natural resources management from economic pre-history up to the present. "Property," as applied to natural resources, is a "primary" social institution both because of its own importance and because several important "secondary" institutions, including taxation, credit and tenancy, are derived from it. Common property, with the institutional regulation it implies, is capable of satisfactory performance in the management of natural resources, such as grazing and forest land, in a market economy. In reality, common property institutions are much in evidence in the evolution of institutions to remedy overfishing. Riparian institutions regulated the use of water from surface streams in England and on the continent long before formal riparian law was developed in Anglo-Saxon common law and German land law. The continued operations of commons both in England and on the continent answers the question raised earlier about the viability of common property in the market system.