Elinor Ostrom

This past Tuesday, Elinor Ostrom accepted her Nobel Prize in Economics. That was a watershed intellectual event for those who are trying to build a more shareable society.  But more than one champion of sharing and the commons has confessed to never having heard of Elinor Ostrom before the prize was announced. So who is Elinor Ostrom, and what is her contribution to understanding resource-sharing, exactly? "Over many decades, Ostrom has documented how various communities manage common resources—grazing lands, forests, irrigation waters, fisheries—equitably and sustainably over the long term," wrote Jay Walljasper in Shareable.net. "The Nobel Committee’s recognition of her work effectively debunks popular ... Read Full Story

Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics 2009 Prof. Oliver E. Williamson was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for “his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm” in 2009, sharing it with Elinor Ostrom. He is the Edgar F. Kaiser Professor Emeritus of Business, Economics and Law and Professor of the Graduate School, both at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. He is a prominent author in the area of transaction cost economics and related disciplines and is credited with the development of the term “Information Impactedness”, which applies in situations where it is difficult to ascertain what the costs to ... Read Full Story

Image by bingisser via Flickr NPR's Planet Money podcast had an interview last week with Indiana University professor Elinor Ostrom , actually catching her as she prepared her acceptance speech for the Nobel prize for economics. In the interview, she talks about her research into the complexities of managing public resources. In short, Professor Ostrom shows that it's erroneous to think of the "tragedy" of the commons as an inevitable consequence of commonly held property. Public resources present a problem when set against conventional thinking about private ownership, but Elinor Ostrom shows that it's simply not true that individuals will necessarily  use up commonly held resources in order ... Read Full Story

Much of what government does is based on the premise that people can’t do things for themselves. So government must do it for them. More often than not, the result is a ham-handed, bumbling, one-size-fits-all approach that leaves the intended beneficiaries worse off. Of course, this resulting failure is never blamed on the political approach — on the contrary, failure is taken to mean the government solution was not extravagant enough. We who have confidence in what free people can achieve have long believed that government should not venture beyond its narrow sphere of providing physical security . It should not attempt to cure ... Read Full Story

Image by bingisser via Flickr NPR's Planet Money podcast had an interview last week with Indiana University professor Elinor Ostrom , actually catching her as she prepared her acceptance speech for the Nobel prize for economics. To play mp3s in your browser, you will need to have Javascript turned on and have Flash Player 9 or better installed. &contenttitle;&contentauthor; In the interview, she talks about her research into the complexities of managing public resources. In short, Professor Ostrom shows that it's erroneous to think of the "tragedy" of the commons as an inevitable consequence of commonly held property. Public resources present a problem when set against conventional thinking ... Read Full Story