CONFLICTING RIGHTS TO RURAL RESOURCES: A Research Strategy for Improved Public Choice

Abstract

INTRODUCfiON There are two basic underlying premises for this paper. The first one is that economics is still a useful discipline. That is, an understanding of economic concepts can contribute to a diagnostic analysis of socio-economic change in the Northeast (among other things), identification of policy options, and even choice. Economic paradigms are versatile and mobile. They help people decide how to deal with all difficult social problems. This assertion is certainly not a foregone conclusion and has in fact been contested rather vigorously. In some circles, clearly those less inform,ed, economics as a discipline has been labeled the viilain, the cause for social ills from poor roads to dirty air and water. I would not suggest that all economic advice is good, but that is the fault of the practitioner, not the discipline. Economics, like any other social science, can generate apparent scientific objectivity to support just about any motive of the user. There are virtually no sterile concepts in the discipline. When used to guide choice, all economic principles acquire a normative flavor, inevitably benefiting some interests more than others. Scarcity, the beginning of economics, means interdependence and choice based normative judgments. The challenge for economists as social scientists and particularly as policy analysts is to employ the robustness for the discipline for useful purpose, to provide . insights helpful to policy and avoid being intimidated by our own discipline. This leads me to my second premise, that judgments, prescriptions and analyses by economists are probably as good as or better than those offered by anyone else. We owe itJo ourselves to be involved. My purpose in this paper is to examine several policy issues surrounding our conference theme in the context of providing information useful for decisions. I am not reporting on a specific research project, but will draw on recent studies in suggesting an appropriate research theme. In essence, my assertion is that to be helpful in current efforts by society to render timely, sensitive decisions on use or misuse of natural resources, economists must pay more attention to the process and rules by which rights, access and opportunities to use those resources are distributed among people. First, the straw man.