economics hard Fill in the Blank

While the 'Tragedy of the Commons' describes the overuse of a shared resource, the 'Tragedy of the ___' describes a situation where too many owners have the right to exclude others from using a resource, leading to its severe underutilization.

  1. arbitrage (or resale)
  2. Treasury
  3. anticommons
  4. countervailing

Answer: anticommons

Coined by Michael Heller, this concept occurs when property rights are excessively fragmented. For example, if a single piece of land requires the unanimous consent of 50 different heirs to be developed into a hospital, the project will likely fail, and the land will sit empty. It highlights the economic dangers of having too many veto players and overlapping intellectual property patents.

Topic Microeconomics - Property Rights
Exam Relevance UPSC Prelims, SSC CGL