Elinor Ostrom

About the author

Elinor Ostrom (1933–2012) was an American political scientist and political economist who made history in 2009 as the first woman to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, recognized for her analysis of economic governance and the commons. Trained in political science at UCLA, she spent 47 years at Indiana University Bloomington, where she founded the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, a deliberately non-hierarchical research center drawing scholars from multiple disciplines. Her landmark work demonstrated that communities can manage exhaustible resources rationally without requiring state intervention or private-property markets.