Fines, externalities, and transaction costs: essays in common-pool resources management

• Autor(a) principal: Matheus Albergaria de Magalhães
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.11606/T.12.2018.tde-13122017-171553

The present dissertation evaluates the internal dynamics of a specific type of common-pool resource, an information commons. Employing a novel dataset related to more than 800,000 transactions in distinct libraries during a 10-year period (2005-2015), I address distinct questions in the fields of organizational economics, law and economics, and public economics. This dissertation contains three chapters in the format of academic papers, besides the introduction and conclusion. The second chapter evaluates the behavioral responses of library users to monetary sanctions. I exploit variation in the timing of introduction of fines in a library, as well as differences among users, in terms of fine incidence. In the case of this chapter, I report two results: first, the introduction of fines reduces users\' delays, as predicted by standard models of law enforcement. Second, when evaluating the dynamic effects of such an introduction, I uncover a result in which fines lose efficacy over time since its nominal value remains the same after instauration. The third chapter measures externalities in an information commons. I estimate the magnitude of the impacts of actions of library users who were subject to a non-monetary sanction (professors and university employees) over users who were subject to a monetary sanction (students). Additionally, I estimate peer effects among users, considering the number of items they borrow from the library. When investigating external effects, I uncover a \"crowding-out\" effect: for an additional unity in professors and employees\' counts, there is an approximate one-to-one decrease in students\' counts. In the case of peer effects, I find that a rise in the borrowings of a user\'s peer group correlates with her own borrowings, an evidence of positive peer effects. Finally, the fourth chapter explores the interplay between common-pool resources and transaction costs. In particular, I try to answer the following question: what happens when transaction costs go down in a common-pool resource setting? I exploit variation in the timing of introduction of a cost-saving technology (return boxes) and its impacts on library performance measures. Contrarily to standard arguments based on transaction costs, I find a result in which the instauration of return boxes tend, on average, to raise the probability of delays and borrowings\' effective durations. The results reported in this dissertation have important implications for theories based on common-pool resources\' management, and constitute novel empirical evidence for the areas of law and economics, public economics, and organizational economics.