STOCKHOLM - The Nobel Economics Prize went Monday to US economists Oliver Williamson and Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win the award, for research on ethical corporate governance and natural resource management.

American economists Oliver Williamson and Elinor Ostrom.

"The research of Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson demonstrates that economic analysis can shed light on most forms of social organisation," the jury said.

Ostrom, who describes herself as a political scientist and not an economist, won half the 10-million-kronor (1.42-million-dollar, 980,000-euro) prize "for her analysis of economic governance" especially relating to the management of common property or property under common control, such as natural resources.

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Her work challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatised, the jury said.

A professor at Indiana University whose name has circulated as a possible winner in recent years, Ostrom told Swedish television her first reaction was "great surprise and appreciation," and said she was "in shock" over being the first woman to clinch the honour.

"If we want to halt the degradation of our natural environment and prevent a repetition of the many collapses of natural-resource stocks experienced in the past, we should learn from the successes and failures of common-property regimes," the jury said.

"Ostrom's work teaches us novel lessons about the deep mechanisms that sustain cooperation in human societies," it added.

She conducted numerous studies of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes and groundwater basins, and concluded that the outcomes are "more often than not, better than predicted by standard theories," the jury explained.

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Landis Gabel, a senior economics and management professor at top French business school INSEAD and who studied under Williamson in the 1970s, told AFP the choice of Williamson and Ostrom was "timely".

"Both the Nobel laureates this year have been working on areas that kicked off with the concept of failing markets," he said.

"In the one case (in Ostrom's work) the failure has to do with common resources and the other (Williamson's) with imperfections that have implications for the structure of business firms," he said.

"But both of these laureates have done work quite different from the more traditional, purely theoretical work that drives off of perfect markets, perfectly rational behaviour."

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This year was also a record year for women laureates, with five honoured including Ostrom, beating the previous record of three.

The others were German writer Herta Mueller for literature; Australian-American Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider of the United States were awarded the Nobel Medicine Prize; and Ada Yonath of Israel was one of three scientists recognised for her work in chemistry.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/10/12-1