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Abstract:
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"The Nobel in economic science was awarded to Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to receive the prize, and to Oliver E. Williamson on Monday. They share the prize for their separate work on economic governance, organization, cooperation, relationships and nonmarket institutions. Both professors teach at American public institutions: Ms. Ostrom at Indiana University, Bloomington, and Mr. Williamson at the University of California, Berkeley. 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."
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