Breaking the policy gridlock on grazing and other uses of public lands

Specifically, the paper relates one dimension of environmental rainfall -- its variability in neighboring local areas -- to economic and institutional behavior in two different arid and semi-arid tropical regions (ASARS) -- the American West and Sudan. The studies show that local variability of rainfall is important in the American West and in Sudan. In these cases, the lower the average rainfall, the lower the correlation among rainfall observations from rainfall stations in close proximity. In the American West, land pooling arrangements tended to arise sooner and last longer in areas characterized by high local variability of rainfall than in areas of low local variability of rainfall. In Sudan, the local variability of rainfall had an impact on specific tribal institutions and on the relative importance of agriculture vis-a-vis animal husbandry. Taken together, the papers provide strong support for the importance of the phenomenon of relatively high local variability of rainfall in two rather different ASARs, and at least tentative support for the hypothesized benefits of common as opposed to private property rights when the local variability of rainfall is relatively high.