Biblioteca Digital

One of the missing links in common property research is investigation of the interaction between common property resource users and the market. The present research fills that gap with a study of communities, Mexico's ejidos and comunidades, which coordinate timber production within commonly-owned forest land. The key research questions are: under what conditions does a local community overcome obstacles to cooperation among its members to conduct downstream timber products businesses as opposed to selling raw material, and does the pattern of industrial organization reveal complementarities in investments between timber and nontimber production? The focus on community-level production rather than individual production under a common property resource regime also distinguishes this paper from much of the common property literature.