In recent decades, the New Institutional Economics has brought about the “return of institutions” to the economic mainstream, and institutional theory and analysis have been developed from Ronald Coase’s notion of transaction costs and Douglass North’s view on institutions. The Nobel Prize award in Economics to Oliver Williamson and Elinor Ostrom in 2009 has pointed out the relevance of the new institutional approach. Natural Resource Economics has included the institutional determinants of the management of natural resources into its research agenda. In this sense, the advances of the New Institutional Economics allows the development of institutional analysis in the field of the Economics of Natural Resources, such as Elinor Ostrom’s work has shown. This paper presents an integral and updated perspective of the foundations of the New Institutional Economics that constitute a set of theoretical inputs for the analysis of institutions and governance in the management of natural resources.