Environmental Crisis and Property Rights: Historical Contexts and Theoretical Frameworks

This paper, which results from collaboration between an economist (R.Scazzieri) and an economic historian (C. Poni) examines the relationship between common property domains and the evolution of private property rights. Its starting point is the consideration of a historical case (environmental disaster in the Northern Bolognese countryside at the close of the 16th century) in which the collapse of standard criteria for the delineation and delimitation of property rights was associated with the emergence of open-access resources. The paper argues that context is essential to the activation of property rights under conditions of uncertain entitlements, and that changing context was essential both in determining the general evolution of the property regime (away from the conventional landed property model) and in influencing the balance between different property types under the specific circumstances of the case under investigation.