Economics Atlas

How Wealth Is Ordered
Economists

Elinor Ostrom

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Elinor Ostrom was an American political economist and the first woman to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, awarded in 2009 for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons. Her research, drawn from decades of fieldwork on real irrigation systems, fisheries, forests, and grazing lands around the world, showed that communities can and do design their own durable rules for managing shared resources sustainably, through monitoring and mutual enforcement, without requiring either privatization or centralized government control. Her 1990 book Governing the Commons remains the foundational text of what is often called the Bloomington School or New Institutional Economics.

Facts
Birth Year
1933 1
Death Year
2012 1
Nationality
American 1
Cross-Tradition Connections

Critiqued Here

Tragedy of the Commons, Concepts

Ostrom's fieldwork and her Nobel-winning Governing the Commons (1990) showed that communities can craft their own durable rules to manage shared resources sustainably, through monitoring and mutual enforcement, without requiring either privatization or top down government control, challenging Garrett Hardin's 1968 conclusion that only those two solutions could prevent overuse.

Source Wikipedia
Tragedy of the Commons, Concepts
Source Governing the CommonsElinor Ostrom

Associated With School

Ostrom co-founded the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis with her husband Vincent Ostrom in 1973, the school's institutional home; her Nobel-winning work on commons governance is its most prominent expression. This is a second, separately recorded associated-with-school edge alongside her existing one to New Institutional Economics, the same multiple-membership convention already used for e.g. Joan Robinson.

Source Wikipedia

Concepts Originated

The Commons, Concepts

Ostrom's 1990 Governing the Commons founded the empirical commons-governance branch of New Institutional Economics this concept entry describes.

Source Wikipedia
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationInfobox, Elinor OstromView the Source
1. Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationElinor OstromView the Source
1. Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationConcepts Originated: The Commons, Awards section
Quote, Concepts Originated: The Commons, Awards section
In 2009, she was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her 'analysis of economic governance, especially the commons'.
View the Source
1. Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With School: Bloomington School, Bloomington school, Origins and development section
Quote, Associated With School: Bloomington School, Bloomington school, Origins and development section
The Ostroms founded the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis in 1973, which became the institutional home for research on self-governance and institutional diversity.
View the Source
The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics
Palgrave MacmillanOstrom, Elinor
Governing the Commons
Elinor Ostrom, Cambridge University Press, 1990Associated With School: New Institutional Economics
Governing the Commons
Elinor Ostrom, Cambridge University Press, 1990Associated With: Tragedy of the Commons, Chapter 3
Quote, Associated With: Tragedy of the Commons, Chapter 3
Ostrom's Governing the Commons shows communities frequently design and enforce their own durable rules for sustainable collective management, without either privatization or central control.

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