Innovations institutionnelles et ressources naturelles

The author develops a set of tools aiming at institutions analysis if we understand by institution the rules of the game. He wants to make apparent hidden institutions and hidden role of institutions in order to permit institutional innovation which, as much as market forces, commands natural ressources use. This attempt of theoretical analysis is included in the american stream of institutional economics and is a wide broadening of the classical welfare economics. Externalities are no more thought as exceptions but as the general case. It applies to all situations of conflicting interests : Every course of action, when interest conflict, has indirect effects on the distribution of goods, resources of advantages. These effects are shaped (1) by the state of the law (institutions) which together with the initial distribution of resources, commands access to power, and (2) by the technical structure of the production process. Agricultural economics taken as management of natural resources is widely concerned by this kind of analysis.