Ostrom looks at situations where the state isn’t involved and buying and selling in the framework of a “price structure” isn’t involved either.

Levitt a statistician with particular obsessive interests. And often he produced very bad causal inferences from his misuse of statistics.

He doesn’t provide an explanatory strategy for explaining global economic order or the coordination of plans beyond what individual minds can observe — i.e. he doesn’t engage the explanatory problem of economic science.

Sorry but I just don’t see a market in that example or analogy. No market, no market failure, and no buyers and sellers.

You seem to be defining markets as anything that has to do with free decision making. If I were to accept that definition, then I suppose I’d agree with you that Ostrom doesn’t deal with where “markets don’t work”. But (1.) that seems like a really odd definition that I’ve personally never heard before, and (2.) I thought the whole point of Ostrom’s research was to highlight these areas where markets and government fail but other institutions have emerged… your definition of market seems to scuttle the insight and value of Ostrom’s work by defining it into the long history of work that has already identified the efficiency of markets.

the market phenomenon is about freedom primarily.all solutions dont exist at the individual level.people influence each other and voluntarily come together WITHOUT govt force. thats what i learn from ostorm et al.

The first formal definition of economics I heard was that it is the study of human decision making under conditions of scarcity. I’ve heard others since, but I still think that’s the best – limiting it to “how markets work” ignores two important questions: (1.) what happens when they don’t work (which is where Ostrom and others step in), and (2.) taking one step back, why are markets there in the first place.

I think more recently they’ve been awarding prizes to people who think critically about these two questions: Stiglitz, Akerloff, Ostrom, Williamson, Krugman, Schelling, Kahneman, Smith, etc. If you compare this list to the list of monumental names that won in the 70s and 80s I think you definitely see a trend towards people that think about Buchanan’s more inclusive understanding of what economics is – and that’s a good thing I think. If we worry too much about disciplinary imperialism we’re not going to get a complete answer to the most important questions at hand.

If she had gotten her PhD in Econ, but then did exactly the same kind of work she won the Nobel for, this argument would get no traction. The prize is for working on great ideas, not the title on some piece of paper.

While I like learn about the work of the economists who win, I’ve never put much faith in any prize. But, that’s a hard argument to win with the “politicians, journalists, civil servants and public,” who view Nobel prize winners like how Jedi Masters are viewed in the universe created by George Lucas.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1974/hayek-speech.html

Is there something of a struggle in the economics profession over what its role should be, etc.? I mean a significant one (obviously any profession is going to have that some level). If so, is it recent or has it been ongoing? I am a layman on these matters; I just read the books economists write, I don’t know much about the internal workings of the profession.