Nobel Prize in Economics to Elinor Ostrom: “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons”

Ostrom’s pioneering work mostly concerns the governance of common-pool resources — resources that are rivalrous (i.e., scarce, can be used up yet need to be or should be governed as a commons — classically, things like water systems and the atmosphere.

This work is cited by many scholars of non-rivalrous commons (e.g., knowledge commons) as laying the groundwork for their field.

In the twentieth century, the negative effects of open access or common ownership received an environmental gloss thanks to the work of Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (1968): 1243–1248.

In 2003 Ostrom herself co-authored with Charlotte Hess a paper contextualizing knowledge commons and the study of other commons: Ideas, Artifacts, and Facilities: Information as a Common-Pool Resource.

More references:

• Creativecommons.org
• Common-pool resource