The MSS. of Seneca's Tragedies

The Tragedy of Tragedies

Tragedies to Come

A book on the Mary Bell case acts, once again, as a depressing reminder that psychiatric facilities for children and adolescents are dangerously inadequate and that, until we devote enough resources and mobilise the right skills, further tragedies may still occur. Gitta Sereny's clear and readable book* will help many people, who had only the Press accounts to guide them, to make some sense of ...

Coping with Tragedies of the Commons

Contemporary policy analysis of the governance of common-pool resources is based on three core assumptions that (1) resource users are norm-free maximizers of immediate gains who will not cooperate to overcome the commons dilemmas they face, (2) designing rules to change incentives of participants is a relatively simple analytical task, and (3) organization itself requires central direction. Th...

Shakespeare's treatment of love : the mature tragedies

Symmetric Tragedies: Commons and Anticommons

An anticommons problem arises when there exist multiple rights to exclude. In a lengthy law review paper, Michael A. Heller has examined "The Tragedy of the Anticommons," especially in regard to disappointing experiences with efforts to shift from socialist to market institutions in Russia. In an early footnote, Heller suggests that a formal economic model of the anticommons has not been develo...