Livelihoods and the Commons

Abstract

Some public and microeconomics textbooks present Hardins’ Tragedy of the Commons and the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game and stop there, signaling the inevitable tragedy. However, a more satisfactory treatment by Wydick uses game theory to explain how the Prisoner’s Dilemma of the commons can be overcome. Somanathan et al.’s study of Van Panchayats is important both for its result (community management is more cost-effective than management by the forest department), and for its method (establishing causality carefully). Agricultural household models help us incorporate diverse linked production and consumption activities of the household related to biomass extraction. However, community attributes and ecology may have co-evolved historically, influencing patterns of biomass extraction.

Appendix

In this appendix I draw attention to the match between the theoretical model (MT; see appendix of Chap. 2) and statistical model (MS) of Dayal (2006), discussed in Extension 3 of this chapter. One way theory can guide empirical work is by identifying a variable for which data can then be gathered. Also the mathematical technique in the theoretical model may facilitate analysis of a feature of the problem being studied, and this feature can also be studied by use of an appropriate statistical technique in the statistical model.

The quantity of interest in Dayal (2006) is biomass (fuelwood, fodder, and grazing) collected from the park:

Collection of biomass from the park = collection of biomass (q) * fraction of biomass collected from the park $\left( \theta \right) \, = {\text{ q}}\theta$.

Dayal did not assume that $\theta \, = { 1}$, as was implicit in the papers by Bluffstone (1995) and Bardhan et al. (2001), and collected data on $\theta$ in a survey, along with q. Dayal formulated a theoretical model of extraction of biomass from Ranthambhore National Park, consisting of two sub-models: (1) decisions regarding q, and (2) decisions regarding $\theta$, given q.

Since both $\theta$ and q are $\ge$ 0, the theoretical model explicitly (Dayal 2006) treated the possibility of corner solutions ($\theta$ and q can be zero) using the mathematical technique of deriving Kuhn-Tucker conditions; and the statistical model used the technique of Tobit regressions.