From Dr Charles Palmer.

Sir, A hunter and self-professed student of the work of Oliver Williamson, Mrs Moneypenny seems to have shot herself in the foot with her admission of ignorance of Elinor Ostrom’s work (FT Magazine, October 31-November 1). From a cursory glance at Google Scholar, it can be seen that Prof Ostrom, whose work is closely related to that of Prof Oliver Williamson (hence, the joint Nobel prize award), garners around 7,200 citations for her best-known work, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge, 1991). While fewer than for Williamson’s The Economic Institutions of Capitalism (Cambridge, 1983), this hardly makes her a nonentity, and does not support Mrs Moneypenny’s assertion that Prof Ostrom has received media attention merely due to being female.