Elinor Ostrom - Nobel Laureate in Economics

Elinor Ostrom press conference
October 12, 2009

Elinor Ostrom, the Arthur F. Bentley professor of political science and professor of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University, will receive this year's Nobel in Economic Science. The announcement was made Monday morning in Stockholm, Sweden. Ostrom is the first woman ever to receive the award. She will share it with Oliver E. Williamson, who is at the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. The two will share the prize for their separate work on economic governance, organization, cooperation, relationships and nonmarket institutions.

Ms. Ostrom’s work focuses on the commons, such as how pools of users manage natural resources as common property. The traditional view is that common ownership results in excessive exploitation of resources — the so-called tragedy of the commons that occurs when fishermen overfish a common pond, for example. The proposed solution is usually to make users bear the external costs of their utilization by privatizing the resource or imposing government regulations such as taxes or quotas.

Accompanied by Indiana University President Michael McRobbie, Professor Ostrom met with reporters Monday morning in a studio at the IU-Bloomington Radio/TV Center. That press conference was carried live via satellite and stream lived on the Internet.

To view an archived stream of the press conference

select this link

(stream runs approx. 23 min)

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