|Peter Boettke|
Vernon Smith is one of the most amazing individuals I have ever had the opportunity to be around. He is a lifelong learner, always seeking to discover new things. He is also genuine as a human being. You enter the no BS zone when you are around Vernon. He also is the first person I ever heard predict that Lin Ostrom would (should) win the Nobel Prize.
Several years ago now, Vernon introduced Lin Ostrom as the winner of the first ever Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Order Lifetime Achievement Award (Gordon Tullock introduced Vincent). In his introduction Vernon summed up Lin as "a remarkable scholar internally driven by a need to understand human forms of social organization."
Today he explains to others why they should all know Lin and her work.HT: Alex Tabarrok
Vernon's piece is excellent, on the money. I am in a similar situation to some extent. I am teaching environmental economics this semester and am in the middle of discussing problems of managing forests and fisheries. While I do not have the students actually reading her work, I had mentioned her Governing the Commons when making clear that it is governance mechanisms of access control that are key, not the label that one puts on property rights per se. I was further discussing these matters today in conncetion specifically with forests and fisheries and was pleased to be able to tell the students at some length about Elinor Ostrom's work and how relevant it is to dealing with these very important problems in a constructive way.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser | October 13, 2009 at 01:26 PM
Also see Mario Rizzo's discussion at ThinkMarkets ---http://thinkmarkets.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/elinor-ostrom-and-the-relevance-of-economics/
Posted by: Peter Boettke | October 14, 2009 at 07:59 PM