Socio-environmental conflicts are widespread, and global economic growth will likely increase them in the coming decades. While political ecology, the analysis of common pool resources, and ecological economics, among others, have provided praiseworthy insights into such conflicts, institutional approaches to these phenomena are still scarce. Classical institutional economics has occasionally been put to work on environmental issues, but proposed frameworks remain relatively underdeveloped. We wish to contribute to institutional research on environmental issues by building upon Bruno Théret’s interpretation of John R. Commons’s transactional model and applying the framework to a case of socio-environmental conflicts. First, we briefly sketch the landscape of institutional contributions (especially those that follow the classical institutionalist tradition) to the analysis of environmental issues. We explain why Commons has largely been ignored on these issues. Then, we analyze some of the key concepts of Commonsian economics that are of particular interest to our theoretical elaboration. Following this, we depict Commons’s transactional scheme and propose an application to a case of socioenvironmental mining conflict in Peru. Our framework could complement existing ones and shed light on the institutional dynamics of natural-resource management through conflict.

To determine the presence of a gender gap in the scientific production among Peruvian physicians and analyze either gap is associated with the presence of observable factors or the presence of prejudices against female physicians. We analyzed data from the National Survey of User Satisfaction in Health 2016, a nationally representative survey that collected information about medical professionals working in health institutions in Peru. The outcome of interest was the number of publications in indexed journals. We estimated the gender gap in scientific production using the Oaxaca-Blinder (OB) decomposition method. From the 2216 physicians surveyed, 252 reported published at least one article in an indexed journal. From physicians with scientific production, 37.7% were women. The analysis of OB decomposition showed a gap of 2.11 indexed publications, disfavoring female physicians (p<0.01). Likewise, the explained component was 1.36 publications, representing 64.5% of the total gap (p<0.05). There is a gender gap in the number of publications in indexed journals among Peruvian physicians. This gap is mainly explained by observable factors, such as the years of medical practice, being an accredited researcher and being a professor.