Don Boudreaux has some good words for Elinor Ostrom, but not so for Steve Levitt who says that her work isn’t really economics.
12 October 2009
Editor, The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018
To the Editor:
On his NYT blog “Freakonomics,” Steven Levitt admits that, until today, he’d not heard of new Nobel laureate economist Elinor Ostrom. He also declares that Ms. Ostrom’s work is social science but not economics.
Levitt’s statements reveal the unscientific narrowness of modern economics.
Doing extensive field work, Ostrom documents that human beings are remarkably creative in solving problems privately that textbooks insist can be solved only by government action. Studying these broader ‘non-textbook-market’ ways of cooperating for mutual gain is what 1986 Nobel economist James Buchanan has long insisted is central to what economists should do. Alas, Buchanan’s plea for a broader understanding of the economy and markets – and, hence, for a broader scope of economic investigation – has fallen largely on deaf ears.
Thank goodness that Lin Ostrom was among the relatively few who listened.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
