A market mechanism for sustainable and efficient resource use under uncertainty

Sustainability and efficiency are potentially conflicting social objectives in natural resource management. We propose a market mechanism to allocate use rights over a stochastic resource to private managers, which is particularly parsimonious with respect to governing and monitoring institutions on which many traditional rights-based management practices rest. The mechanism endogenously determines the maximal tenure length guaranteeing sustainability over the entire period. In addition, the mechanism achieves efficiency, i.e., it maximizes the expected present value of resource rents that accrue to society. Potential applications include improved fishing agreements between developing countries and distant-water fishing fleets.