In search of a common ground: a unified conception of property

The symmetrical features of commons and anticommons cases are the result of the same underlying problem. In both situations there is a misalignment of the private and social incentives of multiple owners in the use of a common resource.

The unitary basis of the problem can be understood in terms of the traditional structure of a property right. According to the traditional con­ception of property, owners enjoy a bundle of rights over their property, which include, among other things, the right to use their property and the right to exclude others from it. In such a framework, the owner’s rights of use and exclusion are exercised over a similar domain. Right to use and right to exclude are, in this sense, complementary attributes of a unified bundle of property rights.

The commons and anticommons problems can be seen as deviations in symmetric directions. In commons situations, the right to use is stretched beyond the effective right (or power) to exclude others. Conversely, in anticommons situations, the co-owners’ rights of use are compressed, and potentially eliminated, by overshadowing rights of exclusion held by other co-owners. In both commons and anticommons cases, rights of use and rights of exclusion have non-conforming boundaries. Such lack of conformity causes a welfare loss due to the forgone synergies between those complementary features of a unified property right.

This conceptualization of the commons and anticommons suggests a link between the welfare losses of the two cases and a dual model of property. As noted above, welfare losses are produced by a discrepancy between the rights of use and the rights of exclusion held by the various owners. The problem is in this way detached from the usual understanding of the tragedy of the commons as a consequence of poorly defined or absent property rights (Cheung, 1987). Common and anticommons problems are not confined to situations of insufficient or excessive fragmentation of ownership, but result from the dismemberment and resulting non-conformity between the internal entitlements of the property right.

It follows that the qualitative results of the commons and anticommons models represent limit points along a continuum, each characterized by dif­ferent levels of discrepancy between use and exclusion rights, with varying welfare losses from commons or anticommons problems.