The work of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom represents a distinctive contribution to the study of political economy, public policy and administration, collective action, and governance theory. Efforts to present a comprehensive overview of the Bloomington School that grew around the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis (now renamed the Ostrom Workshop), which they founded more than 40 years ago, received new impetus with the award of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science to El...

Government management of fisheries has been little short of disastrous. In many regions, valuable fish stocks have collapsed as a result of overfishing. Ill-conceived regulation also means that every year millions of tons of edible fish are thrown back dead into the sea. While an absence of established property rights means that wild fish are vulnerable to overfishing, the problem is greatly exacerbated by large subsidies. State intervention has created significant overcapacity in the indu...