ABSTRACT
Common-pool resources such as forests or the oceans are so-called open-access resources in the sense that in the absence of any legal rule or social norm anyone could in theory take for example the fish in the ocean or cut the trees in a forest. Various property rights can be used to internalize the externalities, including public, private and communal property rights. These different types of property rights are often related to different institutions: the state, the market and self-governing communities. The communal property rights are imposed on a group of resource users and the decisions regarding resource use and management are usually made via self-governing institutions. Different from a public property rights regime, the decision-makers under communal property rights are resource users themselves, rather than politicians and bureaucrats. The trichotomy of property rights and accompanying institutional arrangements - market, state, community - is a simplification of a complicated practice.
