The field research about the management of common property resources offers key lessons about how to promote cooperation. It presents evidence about a diversified and long-lasting set of cases. The institutional analyses has drawn, among others, from the economic analysis of property rights and game theory. Although only occasionally applies to this issues, the Folk theorems provide a powerful tool to interpret these long-term endevours within the lenses of a suitable theoretical framework.

The workshop will illustrate of these concepts through the historical case of the commons in Northern Italy. The first part will discuss the bottom-up emergence of legal institutions for sustaining cooperation in the appropriation of a common property resource. The second part will address the role of the inheritance systems for the long-term avoidance of the tragedy of the commons.