Elinor Ostrom

Elinor Ostrom
Ostrom in 2009
Born	Elinor Claire Awan (1933-08-07)August 7, 1933 Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Died	June 12, 2012(2012-06-12) (aged 78) Bloomington, Indiana, U.S.
Nationality	American
Education	University of California, Los Angeles (BA, PhD)
Spouses	Charles Scott Vincent Ostrom (1963–2012; her death)
Academic career
Institution	Indiana University Arizona State University Virginia Tech UCLA
Field	Public economics Common-pool resource Public choice theory
School or tradition	New institutional economics
Doctoral advisor	Dwaine Marvick
Contributions	Institutional Analysis and Development framework Governing the Commons
Awards	2009 Nobel Memorial Prize 2004 John J. Carty Award 2001 US National Academy of Sciences electee 1999 Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science
Information at IDEAS / RePEc
Academic background
Thesis	Public Entrepreneurship: A Case Study in Ground Water Basin Management (1965)

Elinor Claire "Lin" Ostrom (née Awan; August 7, 1933 – June 12, 2012) was an American political scientist and political economist^[1][2][3] whose work was associated with New Institutional Economics and the resurgence of political economy.^[4] In 2009, she was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her "analysis of economic governance, especially the commons", which she shared with Oliver E. Williamson; she was the first woman to win the prize.^[5]

After graduating with a B.A. and Ph.D. in political science from UCLA, Ostrom lived in Bloomington, Indiana, and served on the faculty of Indiana University, with a late-career affiliation with Arizona State University. She was a Distinguished Professor at Indiana University and the Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science and co-director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University, as well as research professor and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity at Arizona State University in Tempe.^[6] She was a lead researcher for the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Collaborative Research Support Program (SANREM CRSP), managed by Virginia Tech and funded by USAID.^[7] Beginning in 2008, she and her husband Vincent Ostrom advised the journal Transnational Corporations Review.^[8]

Since the 60s, Ostrom was involved in resource management policy and created a research center, which attracted scientists from different disciplines from around the world. Working and teaching at her center was created on the principle of a workshop, rather than a university with lectures and a strict hierarchy.

Ostrom studied the interaction of people and ecosystems for many years and showed that the use of exhaustible resources by groups of people (communities, cooperatives, trusts, trade unions) can be rational and prevent depletion of the resource without either state intervention or markets with private property.^[9]