Tragédia dos comuns' e o exemplo da pesca da lagosta: abordagens teóricas

Abstract

This article embodies the concept of ‘tragedy of commons’ – meaning the suboptimal result in production or exploitation of an economic activity – where the tragic effect occurs whenever the consumption of a common commodity by an agent who maximizes his utility brings about a negative utility to other agents who consume the same commodity. As an overall result, all agents that may use such a commodity end up with leading to a negative social result, which might be split in two branches: first, overexploitation generates exhaustion of resources; second, marginal utility and marginal productivity would tend to zero. The lobster fishing activity is a typical case of tragedy of commons. So, two theoretical approaches are discussed on how to deal with the problem, namely, game theory and optimal control in dynamic optimization.