As population grows, individuals have incentives to expand their exploitation well beyond the optimal yield or capacity of the resource. . . . It is a salutary message, well and diversely substantiated, that should gain the attention of anyone concerned with human ecology, population and resource management, or development.
—Science
This important book will provide an essential baseline for further work on that issue. . . . It will also be important for research in the anthropology of development and in the ecology of small-scale societies functioning as parts of much larger economic systems.
—Choice
The question of the commons has never been addressed so thoroughly and comprehensively as in this book. It has been worth waiting for.
—American Anthropologist
