Open Access Resources and Common Property Resources

'Property rights' represents a set of characteristics that offer certain exclusive power to the owner of the resource. 'Exclusivity' is an important concept in defining property rights. However, there are certain natural resources where 'exclusivity' is not applicable. For instance, take fishery and forestry, which are common property resources.

The owner has non-exclusive rights. He has to share the resource with others. It becomes nobody's resource and everybody's resource in the end. It is also known as open access resource. The presence or absence of exclusivity has some important implications for many economic issues. With private property rights, markets will allocate resources efficiently.

However, in the case of common property resources market mechanism does not lead to efficient allocation and some intervention is needed. This is because no one can prevent others from using the resource and from appropriating a share of rents from the resource.