ASU Professor Elinor Ostrom Wins 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences

TEMPE, Ariz., Oct. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Arizona State University Research
Professor Elinor Ostrom has won this year's Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic
Sciences, a prize she shares with Oliver E. Williamson of the University of
California at Berkeley.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20091012/LA90967)

Ostrom, who holds research positions at Arizona State University and Indiana
University, is one of three faculty members at ASU to be a Nobel Prize
recipient and the second in economics. Edward C. Prescott won the 2004 Nobel
Prize in Economic Sciences and Leland "Lee' Hartwell won the 2001 Nobel Prize
for Physiology or Medicine before joining the ASU faculty this fall.

At ASU, Ostrom is the founding director of the university's Center for the
Study of Institutional Diversity. The center, established in 2008, is nestled
in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change in ASU's College of Liberal
Arts and Sciences. Ostrom is widely known for her study of institutions --
conceptualized as sets of rules -- and how they affect the incentives of
individuals interacting in repetitive and structured situations.

At Indiana University, Ostrom and her colleagues at the Workshop in Political
Theory and Policy Analysis developed the institutional analysis and
development framework that provided a common structure for research on both
urban and environmental policy issues over many decades. The framework enables
the researchers to analyze diversely structured markets, hierarchies,
common-property regimes, and local public economies using a common set of
universal components.

"This is a wonderful honor for Elinor, for ASU and for the State of Arizona,"
said ASU President Michael M. Crow. "It is another example of how ASU faculty
are working to solve real world problems, and how that work is receiving
national and international recognition."

"Elinor Ostrom is not only a brilliant and innovative scientist who, by
combining in an original way approaches in economics, anthropology, political
science and decision-making has opened up many new perspectives in the study
of institutions and decision-making, but also an extremely modest and generous
scientist who has consistently invested great effort in sharing her insights
with those most in need, in the U.S. and worldwide," says ASU colleague Sander
van der Leeuw, director of the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at
ASU.

"Through her 'workshop' in Indiana, and more recently also the Center for the
Study of Institutional Diversity at Arizona State University, she has built a
worldwide community of scholars in many different countries who apply her
insights to the management of such common-pool resources as forests, water and
the like. In my mind she exemplifies the kind of scientist we currently need
most: transdisciplinary, and totally committed to the major issues our
societies have to deal with," van der Leeuw says.

Ostrom was awarded the Nobel Prize "for her analysis of economic governance,
especially the boundaries of the firm," according to the Royal Swedish Academy
of Sciences. "Elinor Ostrom has demonstrated how common property can be
successfully managed by user associations," the announcement read. "Elinor
Ostrom has challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly
managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatized.

"She observes that resource users frequently develop sophisticated mechanisms
for decision-making and rule enforcement to handle conflicts of interest, and
she characterizes the rules that promote successful outcomes," the Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences noted.

In the July 24 issue of Science, Ostrom presents an updated version of a
multilevel, nested framework for analyzing outcomes achieved in
social-ecological systems.

Ostrom, a California native, received doctoral, master's and bachelor's
degrees in political science from UCLA. She is a member of the National
Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity at ASU, which is focused
on empirical and theoretical analyses of institutions -- or sets of rules --
melds laboratory research, field work, archival activities and mathematical
and agent-based modeling in ways that are meant to guide policy-making and
decision-making toward sustainable development. Linked social-ecological
systems related to water, forests, pastures and other resource systems are of
prime importance.

SOURCE Arizona State University

Virgil Renzulli, +1-480-965-8526 or Carol Hughes, +1-480-965-6375, both of
Arizona State University