The reading: Collective Action and the Evolution of Social Norms
Ostrom won the economics Nobel in 2009 for her work on the economic governance, for example of natural and common property resources. I chose this as a required reading because, like the other two required readings, it can tell us something about the ways in which economics intersects with other disciplines. Ostrom’s research touches on many different disciplines, including for example economics, political science, anthropology, and experimental methods. In our course, the ideas in this article touch on various of our course’s economics topics and beyond: preferences and choice, externality theory, game theory, and public goods, for example.
This paper is in large part a survey and review article, reflecting on what—at the time of publication in 2000—this field of research had to say about human decision-making in the presence of social dilemmas, social norms, and governance rules. Economists continue to study behavior in experiments, theorizing, and data analysis today. The fields of game theory and behavioral economics, in particular, continue to improve our understanding about cooperation, conflict, fairness norms, reciprocity, and group decision-making, among other important topics.
Just like last time, please write 300-500 words on your reflections on the article. As always, we’d like to get your reaction and what you took from the paper, not a summary. This is a long article, so feel free to focus on a particular part of it if you like. You can write about whatever ideas or connections came to you on reading, but here are some suggestions for things you could consider, if you need some help to get started:
What surprised you, particularly interested you, or confused you about the reading? How do you think this fits in to the “big picture” of our course so far, and to your understanding and experience of economics as a discipline in general?
Were there particular cross-disciplinary connections that stood out to you?
What do you think we can take away from this paper to inform public policy?
What future directions for research in these topics came to mind as you were reading?
