University Libraries Promotion and Tenure Recognition

Reclaiming the dismal science:* The track to becoming an associate professor of economics -- the dismal science -- was sometimes … dismal. In fact, there is research that shows that the more economics classes you take the more selfish you become. After completing all my Ph.D. courses (perhaps at peak selfishness), I met Dr. Elinor Ostrom (the first woman to win the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel). Dr. Ostrom reminded me that throughout the world and across time communities have worked together to manage their resources and their environment to overcome the tragedy of the commons predicted by the dismal science. In this book Dr. Ostrom wrote:

“As long as individuals are viewed as prisoners [such as in the famous prisoner’s dilemma], policy prescriptions will address this metaphor. I would rather address the question of how to enhance the capabilities of those involved to change the constraining rules of the game to lead to outcomes other than the remorseless tragedies” (p. 6-7).

Inspired by Dr. Ostrom, I hope that through my tenure at Penn State and research on the design of environmental and land-use policies I can “facilitate the development of institutions that bring out the best in humans,”** making economics a bit less dismal in the process.

*Economics was labelled the dismal science by Thomas Carlyle in 1849 because the supply and demand of free market economics did not provide Carlyle the justification that he wanted to promote slavery (Dixon, R. (1999). The Origin of the Term" Dismal Science" to Describe Economics. Department of Economics, University of Melbourne).

** Ostrom, E. (2010). Beyond markets and states: polycentric governance of complex economic systems. American Economic Review, 100(3), p.665