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Ostrom Does What Economists Should Do
Cafe Hayek —
... yesterday and asked who Elinor Ostrom was, or what she worked on, I doubt that more than one in five economists could have given you an answer. I personally would have failed the test. I had to look her up on Wikipedia, and even after reading the entry, I have no recollection of ever seeing or hearing her name mentioned by an economist. She is a political scientist, both by training and her career — one of the most decorated political scientists around. –Steven D. Levitt, University of Chicago ...
Lin Ostrom --- Political Economist --- Wins 2009 Nobel
The Austrian Economists —
... see what I am talking about. She has done fundamental research on the central idea of Ricardo's Law of Association as Mises termed it. Humanly rational choice and institutional analysis combine to address the most pressing question in the social world --- why do some institutional patterns produce societies of peace and prosperity, while others produce societies that suffer under violence and poverty? Now to make my methodological point come home -- consider what Steven Levitt wrote today about the prize to Ostrom: The reaction of ...
What this Nobel prize means
Marginal Revolution —
... It's a nod in the direction of social science, rather than economics per se. It's another homage to the New Institutional Economics and also to Law and Economics. It's rewarding larger rather than smaller ideas, practical economics rather than abstract theory. It's a prize somewhat outside of the mainstream. As you probably know by now, Ostrom is a political scientist and she has spent much of her career at Indiana University. ...
Henderson, Smith on the Nobel and its implications for economics
Knowledge Problem —
... That’s why when economists like Steve Levitt admit to being embarrassed at not having heard of Elinor Ostrom’s work, my reaction is that they should be embarrassed. I give him great credit for being embarrassed, and I hope that he and others will now pay closer attention to her work, and to the work of other economists who use a variety of approaches to analyze political economy questions. ...
Williamson Miscellany
Organizations and Markets —
... 3. Steve Levitt notes that Williamson’s work, while well known to older economists, is not that familiar to the younger generation. I think that’s right, within economics departments, at least. The theory of the firm (or, more generally, organizational economics) is a huge field in economics, but its best-known representatives today are Oliver Hart, Jean Tirole, Bob Gibbons, Bengt Holmstrom, Eric Maskin, and other formal theory folks. Indeed, the bulk of the modern economics literature on the firm builds on the Grossman-Hart-Moore model, not Williamson’s own ...
Tuesday links: cost cut cascade
Abnormal Returns —
... metals, fears of China, congressional earmarks and Goldman Sachs to boot! (Green Sheet)
A review of Michael Mauboussin’s Think Twice. (Aleph Blog)
What do the 2009 Nobel prize winners in Economics say about the future of economics? (Felix Salmon, Real Time Economics, Economix, Economist, Freakonomics, Marginal Revolution, Crooked ...
Mathematical Elegance is Not Economics: Another Implication of the Nobel Prize in Economics?
TRUTH ON THE MARKET —
... prize given the committee’s recognition of the work on asset specificity and vertical integration beginning with Klein, Crawford and Alchian (1978)). I agree with all of the commentators who have agreed that this is a really wonderful prize for all of the reasons they have mentioned: good for NIE, good for L &E, good for methodological diversity in economics, and good for folks that prefer their economics to be detailed, careful, empirically-minded and with policy relevance. And if Steve Levitt is right that most Assistant Professors in economics departments have not heard ...
The Student of Working Together
Economic Principals —
... , until Monday morning, when the news from Stockholm sent me scurrying for a copy. Smarter guys than me, indeed most of the economics profession, had never heard of Ostrom. (Steven Levitt, of the University of Chicago, describes in an edifying way how he looked her up on Google.) I knew at least that she and her husband, Vincent, also a political scientist, had a ...
