| Sumario: | A study was conducted to examine in a general equilibrium model the welfare loss from free access resource use. Findings revealed that actions that intensify competition for a resource, either by lowering the private cost or raising the private benefit of using it, can raise the welfare loss above the rent that the resource would generate if it were owned. It was observed that regulatory policies that established inputs needed to acquire the resource work by transferring part of the resource's rent to controlled inputs. It was noted that the resulting welfare effect is determined by the elasticity of substitution between, and the relative prices of, controlled and uncontrolled inputs.
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