IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/enreec/v88y2025i5d10.1007_s10640-025-00964-4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Stoicism and the Tragedy of the Commons

Author

Listed:
  • Gregory Ponthiere

    (ENS-Rennes and CREM (UMR 6211))

Abstract

This paper revisits the Tragedy of the Commons - a Pareto-dominated overuse of a common resource - through the lenses of Stoicism, and, in particular, of the Stoic discipline of desires, according to which one should wish for nothing that is not under one’s control. Two economic accounts of the Stoic discipline of desires are explored: the I1 account (a requirement of indifference between outcomes differing only on things out of control) and the I2 account (requiring indifference between outcomes that are the best under each circumstance). When studying the implications of Stoicism for the outcome of an N-players simultaneous common pool resource game, it is shown that, under each of account of the Stoic discipline of desires, it is either the case that there is no overuse of the common resource at the symmetric Nash equilibrium, or the case that a suboptimal use of the common resource, if it occurs, is not seen as "tragic" at all.

Suggested Citation

  • Gregory Ponthiere, 2025. "Stoicism and the Tragedy of the Commons," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 88(5), pages 1213-1238, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:enreec:v:88:y:2025:i:5:d:10.1007_s10640-025-00964-4
    DOI: 10.1007/s10640-025-00964-4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10640-025-00964-4
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10640-025-00964-4?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 search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Tragedy of the Commons; Stoicism; Rationality; Common pool resource game; Land overuse;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q24 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Land
    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • Z1 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics

    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:kap:enreec:v:88:y:2025:i:5:d:10.1007_s10640-025-00964-4. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.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.