This volume explores and engages the key thinkers and ideas of the Austrian School of political economy to better understand various aspects of the market process, or the way that individuals coordinate their separate interests in a peaceful and productive manner by unintentionally forming not only market prices but also rules, customs, cultural norms and other institutional arrangements that allow specialization and trade. Together, these dynamics generate a market order by ameliorating the potential for social conflict, and in turn, facilitating the conditions for social cooperation and specialization under the division of labor. Scholars in this tradition focus on how individuals, however imperfect they may be in their decision-making, are nevertheless guided by private property, prices, and profit and loss signals, which emerge out of human action, but not necessarily human design. The diversity in topics and approaches will make the volume of interest to readers in a variety of fields, including anthropology, economics, entrepreneurship, history, philosophy, political science, and public policy.

Institutions and Incentives in Public Policy: An Analytical Assessment of Non-Market Decision-Making explores, both in theory and in practice, the consequences of using public policy as a tool to achieve specific individual and social goals, as well as its impact on private solutions to address such goals. The chapters examine the institutional incentives that operate in non-market settings, both governmental and non-governmental, using the theoretical frameworks of market process theory and public choice theory, they analyze a diverse set of contemporary public policy issues at both the domestic and international levels. Authored by individuals from a variety of disciplines with diverse interests in public policy, this work includes discussions of topics, such as foreign aid, education policy, environmental policy, health care policy, and the construction of private cities. This volume is relevant to scholars, students, policymakers, and knowledgeable citizens interested in the study of economics, political science, public policy, as well as those interested in particular policies rather than specific disciplines.

The work of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom represents a distinctive contribution to the study of political economy, public policy and administration, collective action, and governance theory. Efforts to present a comprehensive overview of the Bloomington School that grew around the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis (now renamed the Ostrom Workshop), which they founded more than 40 years ago, received new impetus with the award of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science to Elinor Ostrom in 2009. Since then, renewed attempts have been made to map the Ostroms' contributions to theories of polycentric governance and collective action, and to multi-methods and comparative institutional analysis of ways of managing social and ecological systems, common pool resources, public economies, and metropolitan reform. The open-ended and multiform nature of the Ostroms' research program defies a single comprehensive overview; yet, it is a stimulus towards both creativity and disciplinary cross-fertilization in social science research. What sets this volume apart is that it brings together theory and practice, models and work on the ground, design and creativity, empirics and norms, to outline the significance of the Ostroms' research program for the future. Each contribution to the volume takes the Ostromian perspective as the point of departure, amplifies it and explores the ground for future work by engaging with other approaches and areas of research with which the Bloomington School has some affinities. This way of testing and extending the ideas and methods of the Ostroms is particularly appropriate since their research program, initiated and nurtured through the Workshop, has always been in-between different fields and sub-fields in the social sciences (political science, economics, public administration, law, history, anthropology), cultivating a strong interdisciplinary way of doing research and exploiting the virtuous circle between theory, analysis, model building, and empirical research. Engaging in a creative dialogue with ideas and methods of other research programs is a way of sharpening one's analytic tools, while renovating one's own vision of social research. This volume is a way of thinking through and beyond the Bloomington School.