Abstract We organized ten virtual conferences between February and October of 2021. These conferences were very well received, and at each conference, there were participants mentioning that it was the best virtual conference they had
I recently saw the Dutch documentary Why we cycle which provides an integrated perspective of the role of cycling in Dutch society. Not only allow cycling people to go from A to B in a densely populated
Just finished a great book by Barbara Oakley on how to learn to learn. As I experience as a professor teaching courses that students consider to be difficult, many students do not know how to study
On July 19th a bridge collapsed on the I-10 that connects Phoenix with Los Angeles. Heavy rain caused flash flooding which eroded the eastbound bridge to give way. As a consequence the I-10, the main
The new book of Paul Steinberg, a professor of Political Science and Environmental Policy at Harvey Mudd College, is entitled Who Rules the Earth? The book is an engaging discussion on how rules rule our lives
In my previous post I lamented the lack of resource dynamics in (video) games. Some of you let me know about resource constraints in some games, but many of you recognized the lack of ecological
During the recent winter break I got introduced by some younger family members to Clash of Clans and Boom Beach, which are strategy games you can play on your ipad or other devices. You make
There is increasing concern over the repeatability and reproducibility of computational science (see also here, here, here, here and here). If computational scientific enterprises want to be accumulative more transparency is required including the archiving
The book Reinventing Discovery by Michael Nielsen is a joy to read. Technological development enables the production of knowledge by a large group of people making small contributions, instead of the isolated inventions in 19th
Mancur Olson introduced the concept of roving and stationary bandits to explain why dictators – stationary bandits – have a self-interest to the society they rule productive to maximize the rent they can collect from
The book “The moral molecule” by Paul Zak is a great book discussing the research on the relation between oxytocin and decision making. Using the trust game and measurements of oxytocin in the blood before
Cass Sunstein is a law professor at Harvard. He was also the author of Nudge with Richard Tayler and the head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from 2009 till 2012.
It is today a year ago that Lin Ostrom died. During the last year many memorials, obituaries, special issues, awards, scholarships etc. have been produced or are in preparation. This is testament to the influence
Knowledge is a public good, at least this is typically mentioned. However, academia as a knowledge enterprise experience a lot of problems of inappropriate behavior. As a Dutch citizen the recent cases of Dutch social
The latest book of Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz is a brilliant discussion of some of the fundamental problems in most societies. He shows how the 1% have created institutional arrangements to derive and maintain
In our asymmetric commons dilemma game (irrigation games) we do in the lab and in the field we find that trust and inequality are driving factors that explains the results. The initial trust in others
Lin Ostrom died today. She is a role model in many different ways. She was modest but persistent to pursue controversial questions in novel ways. Her interdisciplinary approach was natural to her. But such an
The Euro Cup 2012, the European Championship of Football, starts June 8 in Warsaw (Poland) with a match between Poland and Greece. 16 countries will fight for the European Championship. This tournament (which will end
Last week I attended the Planet under Pressure conference in London. The conference was great and extremely well organized with 3000 participants and more than 3000 unique viewers a day to the streaming videos. One
As I am wandering through the streets of Venice – I am here for a workshop – the image of Venice as an anthill pops up. The men who collect small bags of waste in
The book by Dean Karlan and Jacop Appel is called “More than Good Intentions” discuss the use of randomized control trials in developing countries to test which kind of interventions are more effective. The book
Science of December 2 has a great special issue on Data Replication and Reproducibility. This might sounds like a dull topic, but it is critical for science. In the publish or perish era there is
Yesterday attended a very interesting talk of Carlo Jaeger who gave a seminar in our School of Sustainability. He presented a long term view and systems analysis of the financial crises and this led to
The current crisis of the Euro emphasizes some basic lessons from the study of resilience of dynamic systems. Attributes of complex systems that enhance resilience are diversity, redundancy and modularity. There is a cost of
One of the typical examples of self-governance of the commons are small-scale irrigation systems all around the world who exist for hunderds of years and sometimes even more than a thousand years. They are highly
I read ”The Narcissism Epidemic” by Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell who describe the increasing trend of narcissism in our society. The way children are raised, being special, being a princess, getting everything they want,
How do you know whether your house is energy efficient. Well one options is to measure this by heat maps that illustrate the waste of heat to the surrounding areas. Geoffrey Hay and colleagues published
My new research direction aims to build on the insights from small scale experiments to address global sustainability problems. We know that communities are very effective in solving collective action problems in the right conditions.
We just finished the Resilience 2011 conference here in Tempe, Arizona. About 700 people participated in this successful event. Efforts have been made to take sustainability in practice: The meeting was held in a LEED
I had a wonderful holiday in Chile over the winter break, and with my institutional analysis lens I observed some interesting institutional arrangements. I like to mention three of them. Each house has a trash
Recently I got involved in various activities who all have in common to improve collective action among scientists, especially social scientists who work on collective action. This might be a bit awkward, but social scientists
In the latest edition of Ecology and Society I published a paper on an agent-based model that aims to understand the resilience of ancient societies in the American South-west. Many of those societies have dissappeared
Earlier this month a new paper appeared of myself in Ecology and Society. The paper discussed earlier experiments than the recent Science paper and focused on the content analysis of communication. Thousands of lines of
Earlier this month the book that I wrote with Amy Poteete and Elinor Ostrom got published with Princeton University Press. We started this book project around 2004 when Lin Ostrom suggested to bring together the
In the Science edition of April 30, a paper of mine appeared on my work on experiments of social-ecological systems. We introduce our experimental environment (see a screenshot in the Figure) that includes relevant ecological
From experimental research and case studies we are doing at CSID during the last few years we find that there are interesting interactions between equity and efficiency. Many small scale irrigation systems function very well
While the negotiators gather in Copenhagen to get an agreement on a global policy of climate change, it is time to reflect on some insights what leads to behavioral change. Increasingly there are insights from
In a few weeks world leaders, NGOs and scientists gather in Copenhagen for the UN Climate Change conference. Already is clear the no effective agreement will be signed. One may get quite depressed by the
We are very excited that our colleague Lin Ostrom receives the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. This is a tremendous recognition for the hard interdisciplinary and multi-method endevour she and her husband Vincent have pioneered
In the editorial of Science (14 August) Akin Mabogunje, chairman of the Foundation for Development and Environmental Initiatives, proudly discussed the progress made in land reform in Africa, Nigeria in particular. Using “the best available
In a great talk, economist Paul Romer proposes an interesting idea to create places of innovation and development. By the creation of charter cities, who have specifically defined rules and goals, new cities can be
Yochai Benkler wrote the wonderful book “The Wealth of Networks” which discusses various consequences of the increasing use of internet and other digital processes in economic development, creative production and politics. In the past mass
Giving aid is a difficult dilemma. A Samaritan’s dilemma. There are different ways to help the poor in developing countries. Beyond Good Intensions provides a series of videos from aid projects all over the world
Philip Zimbardo, an emeritus professor of social psychology from Stanford University, did in the early seventies a famous experiment where a group of young men randomly were assigned to be prisoner or guard. The Stanford
An interesting book of 2008 is Nudge by behavioral economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein. Based on behavioral studies they discuss incentives structures for many different topics. Thaler and Sunstein introduce the term
The big necessity by Rose George is an unusual book since it discusses the details of how human societies deal with human waste. 2.6 billion people have nowadays no form of sanitation which has immense
Just finished “The brain that changes itself” of Norman Doidge which discuss new developments in brain research. Mainly the findings that brains can adapt to lost functions. Many examples are discussed of people who lost
Stealing somebody’s property is illegal, but sometimes it has benefits and is tolerated. Within the increasing digital world copying software and other digital products is easy to do. The Economist of July 19th discusses some
In the May 24 edition of the New Scientist there is an article on the use of objective statistical analysis to investigated the effectiveness of policies, evidence-based policy similar to evidence-based medicine. Using randomized tests
I just finished a fantastic book by Dan Ariely of MIT on Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions. The book describes a large number of experiments in behavioral economics and psychology how
A great book on the political economy of gangs is written by Sudhir Venkatesh in “Gang Leader for a Day”. In this book Sudhir reports on his adventures as a Chicago graduate students studying the
In the edition of January 22 of PNAS Steven Pinker and colleagues discuss the “logic of indirect speech”. “When people speak, they often insinuate their intent indirectly rather than stating it as a bald proposition.”
In the December issue of Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Daniel Rankin, Katja Bargum and Hanna Kokko from Finland review some fascinating recent research on the study of commons dilemmas in non-human context such as
In a paper in te October 26 edition of Science by Jung-Kyoo Choi and Sam Bowles, entitled “The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War”, they discuss the interesting dilemma why people cooperate with members of
This week two interesting papers appeared who had unusual design to study fairness by using ultimatum games. In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA of October 2, Björn Wallace and his colleagues
Modern conservation techniques have brought us the resurgence of American bald eagles, sustainable forest harvests, improved water quality of rivers and the rescue of prized lobster fisheries. So how can modern conservation strategies also have
A bank in Second Life Ginko has been dissolved creating a loss of 750,000 actual US dollars of it’s members. The unregulated world of second life leads to an interesting experiment of the evolution of
Manfred Milinski and Bettina Rockenbach report in a recent perspective article in Science on the impact of feeling being watched on cooperation in social dilemmas. Even when images of eyes are used in the experimental
Kristine Nowak and Christian Rauh of the University of Connecticut wrote an interesting paper where they describe an experiment to test how people perceive the trustworthiness of avatars. Volunteers where chatting and they were represented
Has evolution led to humans with hard-wired decision algorithms, or is striking cooperative arrangements in human societies a consequence of cultural processes? This is the main struggle Richerson and Boyd (2005) deal with. Probably humans
We are still in the starting phase of building up the Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity but now we have Ann Evans started as our coordinator and have Amber Wutich and Abby York
