Emergence of Endogenous Legal Institutions

We have been in Italy for a week now and the time is flying by too fast! We traveled from Venice to Cavalese and it feels as though we have entered a new country. Cavalese has many German influences which can especially be seen in the different food with a considerable transition from fish to meat. While in Cavalese, we hiked into some forest up in the mountains. While up there we saw some amazing views and our guide explained to us about the damage that the recent storms had done to the area. After seeing some of the damage first hand, we had a chat with a man who works for a forestry agency about some more details of how they try to maintain the forest and how they regulate people’s access to the forest. 

The forestry presentations went along with the article we read, which focused on how communities back in the early 1800’s regulated the use of common property so that resources were not overexploited and therefore depleted. Our article was looking at whether communities could self regulate through informal cooperation with repeated interaction or if a community would need to adopt charters to have set rules of governance for the people. As with everything, there are pros and cons to both strategies, but the article seemed to find that Charters were more likely in more heavily populated towns that were in close proximity to other towns with charters and towns which had a greater amount of resources. Overall, the article found that with the reporting systems in most places there was a fair amount of self regulation complemented by the Charter regulations. A country club was thought of as an example of a place where we can see these systems in current society. 

Cavalese was a beautiful city, which made the cold worth it. Now we are heading towards a little more warmth as we are going to Florence as a class for our “free weekend.” I’m excited to explore Florence with everyone, and then head on to explore many other towns.