Abstract: Since management of a common property resource can only be undertaken by a government of finitely lived agents, a natural way to study common property management is to study the behavior of such governments. This paper proposes that the choice of management objective by a government of finitely lived agents be regarded as a ``move'' in a game of sequential agents. Given this framework, it is shown that there exist subgame perfect equilibria in which each successive government chooses the same ``traditional'' management objective. These strategies enable an economy to overcome an intergenerational externality which can occur otherwise. Thus, following a tradition of conservation may be a rational response to an intergenerational externality. While the paper is primarily concerned with common property economies, the results also apply to private property economies and are relevant to the current debate over ``sustainability''
JEL Classification: Q2;H1