IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/rlecon/v4y2008i1n24.html

Competition and Unitization in Oil Extraction: A Tale of Two Tragedies

Author

Listed:
  • Mohan Vijay

    (Deakin Business School)

  • Goorha Prateek

    (Deakin Business School)

Abstract

This paper compares two organizational modes for extracting oil from a common pool: unitization and competitive extraction. The analysis suggests that the general presumption that unitization is surplus enhancing relative to competitive extraction may not always be valid due to contractual incompleteness associated with unitization contracts. While competitive extraction suffers from the tragedy of the commons, unitization can be subject to the dual tragedy of the anticommons. This provides an explanation for the puzzle confronting the oil industry that firms are often reluctant to voluntarily enter unitization agreements.

Suggested Citation

  • Mohan Vijay & Goorha Prateek, 2008. "Competition and Unitization in Oil Extraction: A Tale of Two Tragedies," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 519-561, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:rlecon:v:4:y:2008:i:1:n:24
    DOI: 10.2202/1555-5879.1264
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.2202/1555-5879.1264
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2202/1555-5879.1264?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Libecap, Gary D & Smith, James L, 1999. "The Self-Enforcing Provisions of Oil and Gas Unit Operating Agreements: Theory and Evidence," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(2), pages 526-548, July.
    2. Buchanan, James M & Yoon, Yong J, 2000. "Symmetric Tragedies: Commons and Anticommons," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 43(1), pages 1-13, April.
    3. Smith, James L, 1987. "The Common Pool, Bargaining, and the Rule of Capture," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 25(4), pages 631-644, October.
    4. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1990. "Property Rights and the Nature of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1119-1158, December.
    5. Wiggins, Steven N & Libecap, Gary D, 1985. "Oil Field Unitization: Contractual Failure in the Presence of Imperfect Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(3), pages 368-385, June.
    6. Hart, Oliver, 1995. "Firms, Contracts, and Financial Structure," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198288817.
    7. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1986. "The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 691-719, August.
    8. Francesco Parisi & Norbert Schulz & Ben Depoorter, 2004. "Simultaneous and Sequential Anticommons," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 175-190, March.
    9. Norbert Schulz & Francesco Parisi & Ben Depoorter, 2002. "Fragmentation in Property: Towards a General Model," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 158(4), pages 594-613, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Prateek Goorha & Vijay Mohan, 2016. "Toward a theory of Smart Institutions," Journal of Economic Structures, Springer;Pan-Pacific Association of Input-Output Studies (PAPAIOS), vol. 5(1), pages 1-23, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jongwook Kim & Joseph T. Mahoney, 2002. "Resource-based and property rights perspectives on value creation: the case of oil field unitization," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(4-5), pages 225-245.
    2. Altman, Ira J. & Johnson, Thomas G., 2004. "A Transaction Cost Econoimcs View Of Agriculture Exchanges For Biopower: Theoretical And Methodological Concerns," 2004 Annual Meeting, February 14-18, 2004, Tulsa, Oklahoma 34686, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    3. Mahoney, Joseph T., 2012. "Towards a Stakeholder Theory of Strategic Management," Working Papers 12-0100, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Business.
    4. Miguel Espinosa, 2021. "Labor Boundaries and Skills: The Case of Lobbyists," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(3), pages 1586-1607, March.
    5. Krishna B. Kumar & Raghuram G. Rajan & Luigi Zingales, "undated". "What Determines Firm Size?," CRSP working papers 496, Center for Research in Security Prices, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago.
    6. Marianne Rubinstein, 2001. "Gouvernement d’entreprise et innovation," Revue d'Économie Financière, Programme National Persée, vol. 63(3), pages 211-229.
    7. Peter G. Klein & Michael E. Sykuta, 2010. "Editors’ Introduction," Chapters, in: Peter G. Klein & Michael E. Sykuta (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Transaction Cost Economics, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Surajeet Chakravarty & W. Bentley MacLeod, 2006. "Construction Contracts (or “How to Get the Right Building at the Right Price?”)," CESifo Working Paper Series 1714, CESifo.
    9. Oliver Hart, 2013. "Noncontractible Investments and Reference Points," Games, MDPI, vol. 4(3), pages 1-20, August.
    10. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2021. "On the optimality of outsourcing when vertical integration can mitigate information asymmetries," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 202(C).
    11. Mofir, 2020. "non disponibile," Mo.Fi.R. Working Papers 159, Money and Finance Research group (Mo.Fi.R.) - Univ. Politecnica Marche - Dept. Economic and Social Sciences.
    12. Nathan H. Miller, 2008. "Competition When Consumers Value Firm Scope," EAG Discussions Papers 200807, Department of Justice, Antitrust Division.
    13. Su, Dongwei, 2005. "Corporate finance and state enterprise reform in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 118-148.
    14. Patrick W. Schmitz, 2006. "Book Review," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 162(3), pages 535-542, September.
    15. Markus Solf, 2004. "Unternehmenskooperationen als Folge von Informations- und Kommunikations-technologieveränderungen: Eine theoretische Analyse," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 146-167, March.
    16. Kim, Jongwook & Mahoney, Joseph T., 2008. "A Strategic Theory of the Firm as a Nexus of Incomplete Contracts: A Property Rights Approach," Working Papers 08-0108, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Business.
    17. Müller, Daniel & Schmitz, Patrick W., 2016. "Vertragstheorie: Zum Nobelpreis 2016 für Oliver Hart und Bengt Holmström [Contract Theory: On the Contributions of the 2016 Nobel Laureates Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström]," MPRA Paper 75233, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Arun Gupta & Horacio Sapriza, 2022. "Do Costly Internal Equity Injections Reveal Bank Expectations about Post-Crisis Real Outcomes?," Working Paper 23-03, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    19. Patrick W. Schmitz, 2006. "Information Gathering, Transaction Costs, and the Property Rights Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 422-434, March.
    20. Inés Macho‐Stadler & Noriaki Matsushima & Ryusuke Shinohara, 2021. "Organizational Structure and Technological Investment," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 69(4), pages 785-816, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:rlecon:v:4:y:2008:i:1:n:24. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyterbrill.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.