Sad news that Elinor Ostrom passed away this morning from cancer. Ostrom was the first (and still the only) woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. Economics was the last hold-out in the Nobel categories in terms of awarding a prize to a woman and she recognized the milestone when she told an interviewer shortly after the announcement:
Having lived through an era where I was thinking of going to graduate school and was strongly discouraged because I would never be able to do anything but teach in a city college ... Ah ha ha, life has changed!
We at RFF were greatly looking forward to her visit this year to give an address as part of our 60th anniversary celebration. Personally, I came across her work first in policy school. She was well recognized in that field as well -- someone who was cross-disciplinary in the best sense of the word.
You can see her Nobel Prize lecture here and watch an interview with her here where she gives an overview of her life's journey and work, including her recognition of alternatives to top-down or free-market solutions to commons problems.
This concept of polycentricity of enabling both market and governments at multiple scales to interact with community organization so that we have a complex nested system. and it ain't pretty in the sense that it's nice and neat. Many people have tried to get rid of creative solutions that are complex, but society is complex, people are complex. And for us to have simple solutions to complex problems, not a good idea.
