Endowed Student Internship Awards: a Portion of the Miller Upton Memorial Endowments Supports Exceptional Students Pursuing High-Impact Internship Experiences
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Senior Seminar on The Wealth and Well-Being of Nations: Each year, seniors in the department of economics participate in a semester-long course that is built around the ideas and influence of that year’s Upton Scholar. By the time the Upton Scholar arrives in October, students will have read several of his or her books and research by other scholars that has been influenced by these writings. This advanced preparation provides students the rare opportunity to engage with a leading intellectual figure on a substantive and scholarly level. Endowed Student Internship Awards: A portion of the Miller Upton Memorial Endowments supports exceptional students pursuing high-impact internship experiences. Students are encouraged to pursue internships with for-profit firms and non-profit research organizations dedicated to advancing the wealth and well-being of nations. Charles G. Koch Student Research Colloquium and Speaker Series: With generous support from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the department has initiated a research colloquium that gives students the opportunity to read and discuss seminal articles aimed at deepening their understanding of the market process. Students also develop original analysis that applies economic ideas to novel contexts. Colloquium participants receive close mentoring as they craft an article with the eventual goal of publication in a newspaper, magazine, or academic journal. The themes of the research colloquium and annual forum are supported with a monthly speaker series featuring the next generation of scholars working on questions central to our understanding of the nature and causes of wealth and well-being. Annual Proceedings of The Wealth and Well-Being of Nations: The keynote address presented by the Upton Scholar is an important contribution to the public discourse on the nature and causes of wealth and well-being. Further, the annual forum includes presentations by noted scholars who expand upon or challenge the work of the Upton Scholar. These presentations are assembled in the Annual Proceedings of the Wealth and Well-Being of Nations, which serves as an important intellectual resource for students, alumni, and leaders within higher education. The Annual Proceedings of the Wealth and Well- Being of Nations 2011-2012 Volume IV emily chamlee-wright editor Jennifer Kodl Managing Editor Copyright © 2012 Beloit College Press. The Annual Proceedings of the Wealth and Well-Being of Nations, 2011-2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recorded, photocopied, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 978-0-578-08943-0 To Elinor Ostrom 1933-2012 Contents Introduction Emily Chamlee-Wright .......................................................................... 11 Challenges for Achieving Conservation and Development Elinor Ostrom ........................................................................................ 21 The Commons of Knowledge: A Historical Perspective Joel Mokyr ............................................................................................. 29 Ostrom and Liberal Education: The College Classroom as Knowledge Commons Robert F. Garnett, Jr. .............................................................................. 45 Yet Another Path: Another Path: Expanding De Soto’s Framework Using Ostrom’s Insights Adrian Perez ........................................................................................... 57 Polycentrism, Self-Governance, and the Case of Married Women’s Rights Reform Jayme S. Lemke ...................................................................................... 69 Regulation’s Effect on Experimentation in Retail Electricity Markets Lynne Kiesling ....................................................................................... 89 Polycentrism and Prison Gangs David B. Skarbek and Andrew Marcum ............................................... 115 Property Taxes and Polycentricity Justin M. Ross and Daniel Hummel..................................................... 129 Contributors Emily Chamlee-Wright is the Elbert Neese Professor of Economics at Beloit College. Joel Mokyr is the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Economics and History at Northwestern University. He is also the Sackler Professor (by special appointment) at Eitan Berglas School of Economics at Tel Aviv University. Robert Garnett is Professor of Economics at Texas Christian University. Adrian Perez is a double major in the Departments of Economics and Philosophy at Beloit College. Jayme Lemke is an economics doctoral candidate at George Mason University and the JIN Fellow at the Mercatus Center. Lynne Kiesling is a Distinguished Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at Northwestern University. David Skarbek is Searle Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Duke University. Andrew Marcum is a 2011 graduate from Duke University with degrees in history and political science. Justin Ross is Assistant Professor of Public Finance in the School of Public & Environmental Affairs, and Affiliated Faculty in the Workshop in Political Theory & Policy Analysis at Indiana University. Daniel Hummel is a doctoral candidate in public administration at Florida Atlantic University. Introduction Emily Chamlee-Wright s the Elbert Neese Professor of Economics, it is my privilege to introduce the fourth Annual Proceedings of the Wealth and Well-Being of Nations. This volume is particularly poignant as its publication marks the passing Aof our featured Upton Scholar, Elinor Ostrom. Under the banner of the Miller Upton Programs, each year the Department of Economics at Beloit College features a distinguished, internationally recognized scholar who works within the classical liberal tradition. Upton Scholars are among those who have fundamentally shaped the world’s understanding of the nature and causes of widespread prosperity and human development, and Elinor Ostrom certainly fits well within this company. Professor Ostrom exemplified everything the Miller Upton Programs have sought to honor: a commitment to civil discourse, a deep respect for the power of ideas to change the world, and the emancipating potential of liberal learning. It was indeed our honor to feature Elinor Ostrom, co-recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, as the fourth Upton Scholar. In addition to Professor Ostrom, we featured leading scholars whose work complements hers. Our primary goal in assembling this cadre of scholars was to demonstrate that the intellectual enterprise of understanding the nature and causes of wealth and well-being is an ongoing project. The essays collected in this volume capture in written form many of the ideas exchanged, challenges posed, and questions considered during the Upton Forum and over the course of the academic year. But as the year unfolded and it became increasingly clear that Lin’s health was failing, this volume took on a second and increasingly important purpose, which was to honor this great scholar and teacher. On behalf of its contributors, I therefore dedicate this volume to Lin’s memory and to her work that has inspired generations of thoughtful teacher-scholars dedicated to both sides of their craft. 12 The Annual Proceedings of the Wealth and Well-Being of Nations A Pioneer in All Respects A child of the Great Depression, a first generation college student, and a pioneer for women seeking graduate training in the social sciences, Elinor Ostrom’s story is a remarkable one. In an autobiographical account, Ostrom described the mental shift that was required to be the first in her family to pursue a college degree and the hard work that was necessary to finance it (Ostrom 2009). She described further her shock in learning that upon graduation, employers considered placement within a secretarial position as the only appropriate choice. In response to her initial inquiries, graduate programs in economics actively discouraged her from pursuing a PhD. The political science department at UCLA did admit her into its PhD program, but she recalled, not without heated debate about the wisdom of admitting and offering an assistantship to a woman (ibid.). The presumption was that upon graduation no reputable college or university would hire her, thereby damaging the reputation of UCLA’s PhD program. It was in the course of her graduate training that she began studying the water industry in Southern California, calling upon the work of Vincent Ostrom, Charles Tiebout, and Robert Warren (1961). Ostrom became increasingly interested in the social coordination problems associated with managing what she would later recognize as common pool resources (CPRs)—resources that are subject to appropriation by a large number of community members and, if left unmanaged, are subject to over-exploitation and degradation. This work would later form part of the foundation for her seminal book Governing the Commons (1990), but that would come later. Ostrom recalled, “In 1965, Vincent was offered an attractive position as full professor at Indiana University, Bloomington. I tagged along as it was very hard for any department to hire a woman in those days. Fortunately, the Department of Political Science later needed someone to teach Introduction