Dr. Abbigail Devereaux and her co-author Dr. Linan Peng recently received the 2021 Elinor Ostrom Award. In this case, the focus of the award was research on China’s Social Credit System. Dr. Devereaux is an assistant professor of economics in the W. Frank Barton School of Business at Wichita State University. Dr. Peng is a post-doctoral research associate at Texas Tech University. In addition to her role at Wichita State, Dr. Devereaux is a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Economic Growth (ISEG).
Read more about Dr. Devereaux’s award winning research on China’s Social Credit System
About Dr. Devereaux
Dr. Devereaux holds an M.A. degree in mathematics and a B.A. in physics from Boston University. Significantly, she re-entered academia after seven years in high tech. In particular, she worked as a technical project manager at Wolfram Research and helped run their complex systems summer school. Consequently, she earned her Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University in May 2020.
As well as receiving the 2021 Elinor Ostrom Award, Devereaux was also the 2020 recipient of the Israel Kirzner award. The award is for the best economics dissertation at in the Ph.D. program at George Mason. In addition, from 2018 to 2020 she was a Program Affiliate Scholar at New York University’s Classical Liberal Institute. Accordingly, she has been published in several journals:
- The Journal of Institutional Economics
- The American Economist
- Review of Austrian Economics
- Cosmos & Taxis
- Journal of Private Enterprise
Dr. Devereaux theoretical research includes:
- the development of synecological game theory
- in particular, this theory offers an analytical bridge between traditional economic theory and agent-based modeling
- combinatorial growth theory
- to explain world GDP progression as a process of “tinkering and trade”
- the theory of piecemeal circumnavigation
- in detail, this theory relates technological innovation in mixed reality to entrepreneurial exit
In addition to research on China’s social credit system, her applied research also includes work on nudge theory. For example, she has researched the implications of algorithmic governance utilizing nudge-type interventions.
About the Elinor Ostrom Award
To elaborate, Elinor Ostrom was an economist and academic leader of the highest regard. In fact, in 2009 she was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her “analysis of economic governance, especially the commons”. Notably, she was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. Sadly, Dr. Ostrom passed away in 2012.
The Elinor Ostrom Award on Collective Governance of the Commons is made every two years and coincides with the IASC biennial global conferences on commons. In effect, the award was created to honor the legacy of Elinor Ostrom. In addition, it acknowledges and promotes the work of scholars involved in the field of the commons.
