Managing Wild Resources: Institutional Choice and the Recovery of Resource Rent in Southwest China
提出估算非木材林产品资源租金回收的方法，基于中国西南野生蘑菇采收数据，比较开放获取、公共管理和私人管理下的绩效，发现缺乏规则的村庄不一定表现差，并探讨地理、资源禀赋、交易成本和制度目标对自治制度形成的影响。
Managing harvests from natural resource systems is often seen as necessary to recover resource rent, that is, for wise and sustainable use. This paper develops a method to estimate resource rent recovery for a class of nontimber forest products and, using a unique dataset on the harvest of wild mushrooms in southwestern China, we empirically estimate this in open access, common access, and privately managed forests. We show that villages that lack rules (open access) do not always perform poorly. We explore how geographic context, resource endowments, transaction costs, and institutional goals may drive incentives for developing self-governing institutions.