The 21st IEA Hayek Memorial Lecture

Last week I attended the IEA Hayek Memorial lecture, given by Elinor Ostrom, Nobel laureate, on common resources and looking beyond government regulation.

The lecture took two parts: a presentation from Professor Ostrom, which was mainly focused on the research methodology, and a Q&A session, where anecdotal research evidence was more forthcoming.

The presentation was heavy on technical content, from a research background, although it was interesting enough. The main element that came from this part was that research requires a multi-disciplinary approach and that one of Professor Ostrom’s aims is to find ways people can work as a team. She stated that fieldwork is a challenging element of research into common resources and it needs to feed into a wider database of evidence to find solutions. Looking in the future it is important to think in wider terms about the problem of common resources and part of their research is about developing the language to bring different parties together for a collect, multi-level solution.

On climate change Professor Ostrom suggested it is modelled inappropriately and that it is not always the suggestion that externalities must be tackled on a “global” level. This may be important, but equally important is to get a focus at the community level, or even the family level. The theme of multiple levels working towards a solution was one of the main thrusts of this part of the lecture. Professor Ostrom gave an example from the US where 1000 mayors are signed up to tackle greenhouse gas reduction on
city level.

During the Q&A session Professor Ostrom was more expansive and illuminated the issues with specific examples. She questioned the validity of natural resource taxes suggesting that the tax was unlikely to be significant unless it is hypothecated to the resource system. There are local schemes that reward innovation in terms of efficient resource use and in Nepal this is evident through a farmer-led scheme for irrigation. By working on a local level it is hoped that you can create successful systems, where the information cost is kept to a minimum.

Professor Ostrom spoke passionately on the case of fish and stated that it is imperative that good data is collected on fish stock and this is then made public. One example she gave was from Briitsh Columbia, where the ownership of a fishing quota means you must take a quota inspector fishing with you - this reduces the problem of bi-catch, where a quota for a specific fish means non-quota fish are thrown over the side of the boat once they have been caught.

The IEA have a blog on the memorial lecture here

I would recommend attending next year - it is free and there’s the chance to catch up with colleagues at the reception afterwards! Keep an eye on the IEA website for details of the 22nd Hayek Memorial lecture.