Elinor Ostrom

Elinor Ostrom, née Elinor Claire Awan, (born August 7, 1933, Los Angeles, California, U.S.—died June 12, 2012, Bloomington, Indiana), American political scientist who, with Oliver E. Williamson, was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons” (either natural or constructed resource systems that people have in common). She was the first woman to win the economics prize.

She earned a bachelor’s degree (1954), a master’s degree (1962), and a Ph.D. (1965) in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles. There she met Vincent Ostrom, and the couple married in 1963. Her first academic appointment was that of a visiting assistant professor of government (1965–66) at Indiana University at Bloomington, where she remained in the political science department as an assistant professor (1966–69), an associate professor (1969–74), a professor (1974–91), and the department chair (1980–84); she was the first female to hold the latter post. 

In addition, she cofounded (1973) the university’s Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. Ostrom later served as a professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (1984–2012) and the Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science (1991–2012), and from 1996 to 2006, she was a founding co-director of the university’s Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change. She also was a research professor and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity at Arizona State University at Tempe (2006–12).

Throughout her career, Ostrom was a consultant for various entities, including the State of California Local Government Reform Task Force (1973–74). She wrote or coauthored several books, including Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (1990), Understanding Institutional Diversity (2005), Linking the Formal and Informal Economy: Concepts and Policies (2006), and Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice (2007).

In 2009 Ostrom and Williamson were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for their work in the area of economic governance, or the ways in which economic systems and hierarchical organizations operate outside the market. Ostrom particularly focused on the ways in which common resources such as forests, irrigation systems, and oil fields can be managed without government regulation or privatization.