Department of Economics

Lee Alston served as Director of the Ostrom Workshop from 2014-2019. Prior to coming to Indiana Alston was: Professor of economics and environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder (2002-2015); Associate and Full Professor of Economics and Political Science, University of Illinois (1988-2003); and Assistant and Associate Professor of Economics Williams College (1978-1989).

Alston’s research interests over the years have focused on the important roles of institutions, beliefs and contracts in shaping economic and political outcomes in multiple domains. Issues examined include the governance and use of natural resources historically and today, including the impact of land titles in the Amazon; the growth of the U.S. welfare system in the U.S. from the late 19^th century to the 1960s; the historical trajectory of Brazil from 1964 to 2016; a framework for understanding economic and political outcomes; and the the logic of leadership and organizational hierarchies. The author or co-author of eight books and more than 80 scholarly articles. Alston has been a research associate at the National Bureau for Economic Research since 1995 and is a former president of the International Society for the New Institutional Economics (now SIOE), and the Economic History Association. He has held visiting positions at the Australia National University: University of California, Davis, Stockholm School of Economics; University of Sorbonne (Paris I), and Princeton University.

Education

PhD — University of Washington, 1978
MA — University of Washington, 1975
BA — Indiana University, 1973, Honors in Economics with Distinction

Awards and Honors

Fellow, Cliometric Society, 2016
President, Economic History Association, 2015–16
Cliometric Society Award for “Exceptional Service to the Field of Cliometrics,” 2012
Vice President, Economic History Association, 2010–11
President, International Society for New Institutional Economics, 2006–2007

Courses

Fall 2018: Institutional Analysis: Concepts and Applications
(POLS Y673 / ECON E724 / SPEA P710 / LAW B592)
Fall 2017: Institutional Analysis: Concepts and Applications
(POLS Y673 / ECON E724 / SPEA P710 / LAW B592)
Fall 2016: Institutional Analysis: Concepts and Applications
(POLS Y673 / ECON E724 / SPEA P710)
Fall 2015: Institutions and Economic and Political Development
(ECON E724)

Selected Publications

Books | US Economic History | Brazil Work | Political Economy and Methodological Work in the New Institutional Economics

Books

Alston, Eric, Lee J. Alston, Bernardo Mueller, and Tomas Nonnenmacher. 2018. Institutional and Organizational Analysis: Concepts and Applications. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Alston, Lee J., Marcus Melo, Bernardo Mueller, and Carlos Pereira. 2016. Brazil in Transition: Beliefs, Leadership, and Institutional Change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Alston, Lee J., and Joseph P. Ferrie. 1999. Southern Paternalism and the American Welfare State: Economics, Politics, and Institutions in the South, 1865–1965. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Alston, Lee J., Gary D. Libecap, and Bernardo Mueller. 1999. Titles, Conflict, and Land Use: The Development of Property Rights and Land Reform on the Brazilian Amazon Frontier. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Alston, Lee J., Thrainn Eggertsson, and Douglass North, eds. 1996. Empirical Studies in Institutional Change. New York: Cambridge University Press. (Translated into Chinese.)

US Economic History

Alston, Lee J., and Bernardo Mueller. 2015. “Towards a More Evolutionary Theory of Property Rights.” Iowa Law Review 100(6) (Aug.): 2255–73.

Alston, Lee J., Edwyna Harris, and Bernardo Mueller. 2012. “The Development of Property Rights on Frontiers: Endowments, Norms, and Politics.” Journal of Economic History 72(3): 741–70.

Alston, Lee J., Jeffery A. Jenkins, and Tomas Nonnenmacher. 2006. “Who Should Govern Congress? Access to Power and the Salary Grab of 1873.” Journal of Economic History 66(3): 674–706. Also published as NBER Working Paper 11908, Program on the Development of the American Economy.

Alston, Lee J., and Joseph Ferrie. 2005. “Time on the Ladder: Career Mobility in Agriculture, 1890-1938.” Journal of Economic History 65(4) (Dec.): 1058–81. Also published as NBER Working Paper 11231, Program on the Development of the American Economy.

Alston, Lee J., Ruth Dupré, and Tomas Nonnenmacher. 2002. “Social Reformers and Regulation: The Prohibition of Cigarettes in the United States and Canada.” Explorations in Economic History 39(4) (Oct.): 425–45.

Alston, Lee J., and Kyle Kauffman. 2001. “Competition and the Compensation of Sharecroppers by Race: A View from Plantations in the Early Twentieth Century.” Explorations in Economic History 38(1) (Jan.): 181–94.

Alston, Lee J., and Kyle Kauffman. 1997. “Agricultural Chutes and Ladders: New Estimates of Sharecroppers and ‘True Tenants’ in the South, 1900–1920.” Journal of Economic History 57(2) (June): 464–75.

Alston, Lee J., Wayne Grove, and David Wheelock. 1994. “Why Do Banks Fail: Evidence from the 1920s.” Explorations in Economic History 83(4) (Sept.): 409–31.

Alston, Lee J., and Joseph Ferrie. 1993. “Paternalism in Agricultural Labor Contracts in the U.S. South: Implications for the Growth of the Welfare State.” American Economic Review 83(4) (Sept.): 852–76. Reprinted in The International Library of the New Institutional Economics, vol. 6, edited by Claude Ménard (Edward Elgar, 2005).

Alston, Lee J., and T. J. Hatton. 1991. “The Earnings Gap between Agricultural and Manufacturing Laborers, 1925-1941.” Journal of Economic History 51(1) (Mar.): 83–99.

Alston, Lee J. 1990. “Issues in Postbellum Southern Agriculture.” In Agriculture and National Development: Views on the Nineteenth Century, edited by Louis Ferleger, 207–28. Ames: Iowa State University Press.

Rucker, Randal, and Lee J. Alston. 1987. “Farm Failures and Government Intervention: A Case Study of the 1930s.” American Economic Review 77(4) (Sept.): 724–30.

Alston, Lee J., and Joseph Ferrie. 1985. “Labor Costs, Paternalism, and Loyalty in Southern Agriculture: A Constraint on the Growth of the Welfare State.” Journal of Economic History 45(1) (Mar.): 95–117.

Alston, Lee J. 1984. “Farm Foreclosure Moratorium Legislation: A Lesson from the Past.” American Economic Review 74(3) (June): 445–57.

Alston, Lee J., and Morton Schapiro. 1984. “Inheritance Laws across Colonies: Causes and Consequences.” Journal of Economic History 44(2) (June): 277–87.

Alston, Lee J. 1983. “Farm Foreclosures in the United States during the Interwar Period.” Journal of Economic History 43(4) (Dec.): 885–903.

Alston, Lee J., and Robert Higgs. 1982. “Contractual Mix in Southern Agriculture since the Civil War: Facts, Hypotheses, and Tests.” Journal of Economic History 42(2) (June): 327–53.

Alston, Lee J. 1981. “Tenure Choice in Southern Agriculture, 1930–1960.” Explorations in Economic History 18(3) (July): 211–32.

Brazil Work

Alston, Lee J., and Bernardo Mueller. 2016. “Economic Backwardness and Catching Up: Brazilian Agriculture, 1964–2014.” In Diverse Development Paths and Structural Transformation in the Escape from Poverty, edited by Martin Andersson and Tobias Axelsson, 181–205. New York: Oxford University Press. Published as NBER Working Paper 21988 (February 2016).

Alston, Lee J., Edwyna Harris, and Bernardo Mueller. 2012. “The Development of Property Rights on Frontiers: Endowments, Norms, and Politics.” Journal of Economic History 72(3): 741–70.

Alston, Lee J., and Bernardo Mueller. 2011. “Brazilian Development: This Time for Real?” CESifo Forum 1/2011: 37–46.

Alston, Lee J., Marcus Melo, Bernardo Mueller, and Carlos Pereira. 2006. “Political Institutions, Policymaking Processes and Policy Outcomes in Brazil.” Latin American Research Network Working Paper R–509. Washington, DC: Research Division, Inter-American Development Bank.

Alston, Lee J., and Bernardo Mueller. 2006. “Pork for Policy: Executive and Legislative Exchange in Brazil.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 22(1) (Spring): 87–114. Also published as NBER Working Paper 11273, Program in International Finance and Macroeconomics.

Alston, Lee J., and Bernardo Mueller. 2004. “Review of Law and Employment: Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean with an Emphasis on Brazilian Labor Institutions.” Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal 25(2): 339–48.

Alston, Lee J., Gary D. Libecap, and Bernardo Mueller. 2000.“Land Reform Policies, the Sources of Violent Conflict, and Implications for Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management39(2): 162–88.

Alston, Lee J., Gary D. Libecap, and Bernardo Mueller. 1999. “A Model of Rural Conflict: Violence and Land Reform Policy in Brazil." Environment and Development Economics 4: 135–60.

Alston, Lee J., Gary D. Libecap, and Bernardo Mueller. 1998. “Property Rights and Land Conflict: A Comparison of Settlement of the U.S. Western and Brazilian Amazon Frontiers.” In Latin America and the World Economy since 1800, edited by John H. Coatsworth and Alan M. Taylor, 55–84. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Alston, Lee J., Gary Libecap, and Robert Schneider. 1996. “The Determinants and Impact of Property Rights: Land Titles on the Brazilian Frontier.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 12(1): 25–61. Reprinted in The International Library of the New Institutional Economics, vol. 2, edited by Claude Ménard (Edward Elgar, 2005).

Alston, Lee J., Gary Libecap, and Robert Schneider. 1995. “Property Rights and the Preconditions for Markets: The Case of the Amazon Frontier.” Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 151(1): 89–107.

Political Economy and Methodological Work in the New Institutional Economics

Alston, Lee J., and Krister Andersson. 2011. “Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Forest Protection: The Transaction Costs of Implementing REDD”. Climate Law 2(2): 281–89.

Alston, Lee J., Shannan Mattiace, and Tomas Nonnenmacher. 2009. “Coercion, Culture, and Contracts: Labor and Debt on Henequen Haciendas in Yucatán, Mexico, 1870–1915”. Journal of Economic History 69(1) (Mar.): 104–37.

Alston, Lee J. 2008. “The ‘Case’ for Case Studies in New Institutional Economics.” In New Institutional Economics: A Guidebook, edited by Eric Brousseau and Jean-Michel Glachant, 103–21. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Alston, Lee J., and Bernardo Mueller. 2005. “Property Rights and the State.” In Handbook of New Institutional Economics, edited by Claude Menard and Mary M. Shirley, 573–90. New York: Springer.

Alston, Lee J. 2003. “Sharecropping.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History 4: 475–78.

Alston, Lee J. 2003. “Tenant Farming.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History 5: 97–101.

Alston, Lee J., and Bernardo Mueller. 2003. “Property Rights to Land.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History 4: 274–79.

Alston, Lee J., and Andrés Gallo. 2002. “The Political Economy of Bank Reform in Argentina under Convertibility.” The Journal of Policy Reform 5(1): 1–16.

Alston, Lee J. 2000. “Institutions and Property Rights across Time and Space: Lessons from Eastern Europe and Latin America.” In Liberalization and its Consequences: A Comparative Perspective on Latin America and Eastern Europe, edited by Werner Baer and Joseph Love, 305–15. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.

Alston, Lee J. 1999. “Technological Change, Transaction Costs, and the Industrial Organization of Cotton Production in the US South, 1950–1970.” In Authority and Control in Modern Industry: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives, edited by Paul L. Robertson, 140–54. New York: Routledge.

Alston, Lee J. 1994. “Institutions and Markets in History: Lessons for Central and Eastern Europe.” In Economic Transformations in East and Central Europe: Legacies from the Past and Policies for the Future, edited by David Good, 43–59. New York: Routledge.

Fairris, David, and Lee J. Alston. 1994. “Wages and the Intensity of Labor Effort: Efficiency Wages versus Compensating Payments.” Southern Economic Journal 61(1) (July): 149–60.

Robertson, Paul L., and Lee J. Alston. 1992. “Technological Choice and the Organization of Work in Capitalist Firms.” Economic History Review 45(2) (May): 330–49.

Alston, Lee J., and William Gillespie. 1989. “Resource Coordination and Transaction Costs: A Framework for Analyzing the Firm/Market Boundary.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 11(2): 191–212.

Related Links

• SSRN
• Research Gate