WASHINGTON — One scholar studies how best to manage resources such as forests, fisheries and oil fields. A fellow American looks at why some companies grow so large. Together they’re winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in economics for groundbreaking work that could affect efforts to prevent another global financial crisis.
Elinor Ostrom, 76, known for her work on the management of common resources, is the first woman to win a Nobel in economics.
She shares the prize with Oliver Williamson, 77, who pioneered the study of how and why companies structure themselves and resolve conflicts.
Monday’s final prizes of 2009 capped a year in which a record five women won Nobels. Eleven American citizens, some of them with dual nationality, were among the 13 Nobel winners, including President Barack Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Ostrom and Williamson “advanced economic governance research from the fringe to the forefront of scientific attention.” They will share the $1.4 million prize.
Ostrom showed how common resources — forests, fisheries, oil fields, grazing lands and irrigation systems — can be managed successfully by the people who use them, rather than by governments or private companies.
Williamson, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, found that companies typically are better able than markets to resolve conflicts when competition is limited.
Unlike the other prizes, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences goes back only to 1968, when it was established by The Central Bank of Sweden as a memorial to Alfred Nobel.
