Elinor Ostrom wins the Nobel Prize for Economics 2009

October 12th, 2009 - 6:37 pm ICT by Aishwarya Bhatt  

Stockholm, Oct 12 (THAINDIAN NEWS) The Nobel Prize for Economics for 2009 was awarded jointly to Elinor Ostrom and Oliver E. Williamson.

Elinor Ostrom is the Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science, and Co-Director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University Bloomington.

She has a Ph.D. in Political Sciences, and is also the Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity at Arizona State University.

According to the Nobel Citation, “Elinor Ostrom has challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatized. Based on numerous studies of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes, and groundwater basins, Ostrom concludes that the outcomes are, more often than not, better than predicted by standard theories. She observes that resource users frequently develop sophisticated mechanisms for decision-making and rule enforcement to handle conflicts of interest, and she characterizes the rules that promote successful outcomes.”

The Nobel Prize Selection Committee said that it was honoring Elinor Ostrom “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons”

The Nobel Committee contacted her when the announcement was made and she was shocked at her being the recipient. She was over-joyed at the honor which she received and said that it would take some time to sink in. however she said that she had still not thought about how she would use the prize money, but it certainly will not be used for personal purposes, and would be used to further her research.

She is also the first woman to win the Economics Nobel.

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