UPPSC 2019 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 4 of 150

Correct — D, Elinor Ostrom (the paper prints the name as 'Elinar'). She won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 2009, shared with Oliver E. Williamson, and was cited 'for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons'. She was the first woman to win the economics prize. The 'second time' in the question refers to Esther Duflo, who shared the 2019 prize with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty; at 46 she was also the youngest economics laureate.

• (a)Esther Duflo — Duflo is the 2019 laureate the question is talking about — the second woman, not the first. Placing her at option (a) is the deliberate trap for anyone who reads only the headline of the news item.
• (b)Gerty Theresa Cori — Gerty Cori won a Nobel in 1947, but in Physiology or Medicine — she was the first woman to win in that discipline, not in Economics.
• (c)Maria Goeppert — Maria Goeppert Mayer shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics for the nuclear shell model. Again a woman laureate, but in a different discipline.

The economics prize is not one of Alfred Nobel's original five awards. It is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, instituted by Sweden's central bank in 1968 and first awarded in 1969, though it is presented alongside the others. Elinor Ostrom, trained as a political scientist, won it in 2009 for showing that Garrett Hardin's 'tragedy of the commons' is not inevitable: communities of users — of forests, fisheries, pastures and irrigation systems — repeatedly build their own rules, monitoring and sanctions that keep a shared resource sustainable without either privatisation or state control.

The question is a distractor exercise built on one confusion — 'famous woman Nobel laureate' versus 'first woman in this specific prize'. Cori and Goeppert Mayer are genuine laureates in other subjects, and Duflo is the very person whose 2019 win prompted the question. Reading the stem carefully ('the first woman who was earlier awarded this prize') is the whole task.

• Elinor Ostrom (USA) won the economics Nobel in 2009, shared with Oliver E. Williamson — the first woman to do so
• Citation: 'for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons'; her book Governing the Commons (1990) is the standard reference
• Esther Duflo (2019, with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer) was the second woman and the youngest economics laureate
• The economics prize was instituted by Sveriges Riksbank in 1968 and first awarded in 1969 — it is not one of Nobel's original five
• Gerty Cori (Physiology or Medicine, 1947) and Maria Goeppert Mayer (Physics, 1963) are women laureates in other disciplines

• Marking Esther Duflo — she is the second woman, and the question is asking for the first
• Assuming any woman Nobel laureate qualifies: Cori won in Medicine, Goeppert Mayer in Physics
• Treating the economics prize as one of Alfred Nobel's original five awards

'Who was the first/second person to win award X' and laureate-to-field matching are staples for UPPSC; UPSC more often asks the underlying idea — the commons, or the RCT method — than the name.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was shared by Esther Duflo, Michael Kremer and:

  • (a)Amartya Sen
  • (b)Abhijit Banerjee
  • (c)Raghuram Rajan
  • (d)Kaushik Basu

  Answer(b) Abhijit Banerjee — for the experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Elinor Ostrom's Nobel-winning work dealt mainly with:

  • (a)the governance of common-pool resources
  • (b)the pricing of financial derivatives
  • (c)auction theory and market design
  • (d)national income accounting

  Answer(a) the governance of common-pool resources — showing that user communities can manage shared resources sustainably.