Elinor Ostrom's work, often called the Bloomington School or New Institutional Economics, does not fit inside any of the atlas's six existing schools of thought: Classical, Keynesian, Marxian, Austrian, Monetarist, or Behavioral. This wave linked her directly into the atlas rather than forcing her into one of them.
What would resolve this An owner decision on whether the atlas should mint a seventh school of thought for New Institutional Economics or the Bloomington School, or instead leave commons governance economists linked individually without a dedicated school entity.
Resolution Resolved 2026-08-22 by w-econ-nie, following the conductor's own ruling-294 scholarship call: New Institutional Economics is modeled as its own school of thought (entity 122, slug new-institutional-economics), historically and doctrinally distinct from the earlier Veblen-Commons Institutional Economics (entity 116, slug institutional) minted the same night. The new school groups Ronald Coase's transaction-cost foundations (The Nature of the Firm, 1937; The Problem of Social Cost, 1960), Douglass North's institutions-and-economic-performance synthesis (1990), Oliver Williamson's governance-and-boundaries-of-the-firm theory, and Elinor Ostrom's commons-governance Bloomington School (Governing the Commons, 1990), previously linked into the atlas individually with no dedicated school entity, as this question's own why-open note recorded. Elinor Ostrom (entity 76) now carries an associated-with-school edge to the new entity, and the new school carries its own associated-with edge to Institutional Economics naming the distinction in full. · August 22, 2026
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