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Working Paper Heterogeneous Preferences and Collective Action(2003) Ahn, Toh-Kyeong; Ostrom, Elinor; Walker, James M."In recent years, scholars have turned to alternative representations of utility to capture motivational heterogeneity across individuals. In the research reported here, we examine two models of heterogeneous utility—linear-altruism and inequity-aversion—in the context of two-person, social dilemma games. Empirical tests are conducted drawing on data from experiments and surveys. We find that the model of inequity-aversion accounts for a substantial proportion of the preference types and behavior that are not explained by the standard model of self-interested preferences. In contrast, the altruism model does not provide a significant increase in explanatory power over the inequity aversion model."Working Paper The Meaning of Social Capital and its Link to Collective Action(2007) Ostrom, Elinor; Ahn, Toh-KyeongFrom p. 2-3: "The social capital approach takes these factors seriously as causes of behavior and collective social outcomes. The social capital approach does this in ways that are consistent with continued and lively development of neoclassical economics and rational choice approaches. In sum, the social capital approach improves the knowledge of macro political and economic phenomena by expanding the factors to be incorporated in such knowledge and by constructing richer causality among those factors, and by achieving these without dismissing the insights from neoclassical economics and rational choice theories. "Abundant, and often valid, criticisms of the concept have also levied against it (Arrow 1999; Solow 1999; Fine 2001; Durlauf 2002 - to name a few). Solow notes that much of the social capital research is plagued by 'vague ideas' and 'casual empiricism.' Academic research can be afflicted by fads and fashions just as much as any other field. We believe, however, that the concept of social capital can be defined carefully. It is a useful concept that should take its place alongside physical and human capital as core concepts of great usefulness to the social sciences."Working Paper Scaling Issues in the Social Sciences: A Report for the International Human Dimensions Program(1998) Gibson, Clark C.; Ostrom, Elinor; Ahn, Toh-Kyeong"Numerous human activities--from the cutting of firewood in rural Uganda to the production of hydrocarbons by oil refineries in southern California--have causes and consequences measured at small, medium, and large levels on spatial and temporal scales. The multilevel/multi-scale nature of the problems relating to the human dimensions of global change demands that researchers address key issues of scales and levels in their analyses. While natural scientists have long understood the importance of scales, and have operated within relatively well-defined hierarchical systems of analysis, social scientists have worked with scales of less precision and greater variety. With the growing realization that the insights of social science are crucial to understanding the relationships between people and the natural environment, it is necessary for social scientists to identify more clearly the effects of diverse levels on multiple scales in their own analyses, to comprehend how other social scientists employ diverse kinds of levels and scales, and to begin a dialogue with natural scientists about how different conceptions of scales and levels are related. "This report seeks to facilitate this dialogue among researchers by reviewing the concept of scale in the social sciences. After reading extensive numbers of articles and books related to the broad concept of scale, one of the key problems that we have come to recognize is that terms such as level and scale are frequently used interchangeably and that many of the key concepts related to scale are used differently across disciplines and scholars. Thus, we present in Table 1.1 definitions of key terms that we have come to use after reading the literature cited in the bibliography and struggling with the confusion created by many different uses of the same word."Working Paper Generating Distrust in PD Games: Fear, Greed, and History of Play(1999) Ahn, Toh-Kyeong; Ostrom, Elinor; Schmidt, David; Shupp, Robert; Walker, James M."The impact of game parameters, social history, and endogenous group formation on the choice of strategies in repeated PD games is experimentally examined. Overall, rates of cooperation are quite low and decline with repetition of the game. On the other hand, rates of cooperation are increased by increases in the level of cooperators gain, as well as in groups that endogenously, via strategy selection, 'self-select' into subgroups of relatively high cooperators. Rates of cooperation are also increased in situations where subjects are repeatedly matched with the same person, relative to situations with random matching between decision rounds."