The property status of environmental resources and the evolution of market structure based on Cournot model

Based on the Cournot model in oligopoly market, the article discuss the relation between the status of property rights and the evolution of market structure by calculating the environmental resources input and goods output under the condition of profit maximization. Through comparing with the market structure in three property Status, non-delimitation, free-delimitation and paid-delimitation, we get the conclusion: we cannot reduce the consumption level of environmental resources only by the delimitation of property rights. And only with a certain price to allocate rights, it's possible to attain Pareto improvement in resources utilization. In addition, although the paid-delimitation status will lead to a decrease of total output, the firms still have a motivation to improve technical efficiency, because their own and total market output both have business with the utilization efficiency of environmental resources in this status.