Analyses of common property extraction under "free access" used to assume period-by-period rent dissipation thus avoiding the use of game theory; more modern analyses instead deduce the subgame perfect Nash equilibrium of the common property game and then investigate its free-access limit. Salant and Negri (1987) providing a troubling example where these two methodologies yield radically different predictions: while the older analysis predicts eventual extinction of the resource, the game-theoretic analysis predicgts unlimited growth. We review and simplify their example and then provide weak conditions insuring that the two methodologies yield the same predictions.Center for Research on Economic and Social Theory, Department of Economics, University of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/100645/1/ECON120.pd
