Modeling common property ownership as a dynamic contract

Common property ownership is modeled as a joint wealth maximizing egalitarian share contract. Two-stage differential games are developed for various types of common property in order to examine the incentives inherent in common property regimes. Cases in which group members contract over just membership size and cases in which members contract over both group size and resource investment are considered. Envelope methods in optimal control theory are used to generate some comparative statics predictions about the value of the contracts which define property rights to a capital stock. -Authors