Rules, Games, and Common-Pool Resources. (book reviews)

This is an unusual book. Ostrom, Gardner, Walker, and their colleagues analyze commons problems via both formal and informal theory and study them empirically via experiments and field research. Doing all this is difficult. It requires bringing together scholars from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, focusing their collective efforts on a common topic, and integrating their results.

It is therefore not surprising that though we often praise the idea of bringing multiple methods to bear on a problem, we don't do it very often. Ostrom et al. not only attempt it; they bring it off with ...

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