Rules in the Public Sector in the Light of the Nobel Prize: Elinor Ostrom’s Contribution in the Collective Action Research

The idea of the article Rules in the public sector in the light of Nobel Prize: contribution of Elinor Ostrom in the investigation of the collective action problem appeared as an adequate response to the recent important event in the scientific world - The Nobel Prize awards in the economic sciences area. Elinor Ostrom is the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Economics, which was established in 1968. Her award recognizes her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons, to the investigation of which she has devoted more than 40 years. The main aim of this article is to track the development of the theory of rules, promoting the effective management of collective action problem in Ostroms works and to show her contribution to the development of the modern economic science. The last, but not the least goal is to show the importance of her conclusions for the analysis of the public sector in modern Russia. The article begins with the description of the main events of Ostroms professional experience, research interests and investigation methods. Further, the detailed analysis is held of the main representative publications on the topics of common-pool resource problem, influence of different public institutions on it, game theory. Some parts of this article are devoted to the specific examples of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes and groundwater basins in such countries as Switzerland, Spain, Nepal, Turkey, etc. Methods of analysis and conclusions of common resource problem play an important role for the scientific research of any economy, including economies in the position of sharp institutions development such as Russian economy, for one. That is why scientific research held by Elinor Ostrom is so important for the creation of the right view about all the advantages and disadvantages of different variants of common-pool resource management problem. The article concludes with the description of the main publications of Russian economists on this specific topic, including A. Aleskerov, A. Auzan, G, Egorov, K. Sonin, R. Enikolopov and E. Guravskaya.