Elinor Ostrom (August 7, 1933 – June 12, 2012), an American political economist, was awarded the 2009 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for "her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons". She was the first, and to date, the only woman to win the prize in this category.
In 1973, she co-founded the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University. Examining the use of collective action, trust, and cooperation in the management of common pool resources, her approach to public policy, known as the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework, has been considered sufficiently distinct to be thought of as a separate school of public choice theory.
Her most famous research focuses on how humans interact with ecosystems to maintain long-term sustainable resource yields. She conducted her field studies on the management of pasture by locals in Africa and irrigation systems management in villages of western Nepal. Her work has considered how societies have developed diverse institutional arrangements for managing natural resources and avoiding ecosystem collapse in many cases, even though some arrangements have failed to prevent resource exhaustion. Her work emphasized the multifaceted nature of human–ecosystem interaction and argues against any singular "panacea" for individual social-ecological system problems.