Paul Krugman wins economics Nobel prize
economix.blogs.nytimes.com
economix.blogs.nytimes.com
(1) Krugman won the John Bates Clark Medal for economics in 1991. This is a Prize given every two years to an American Economist under 40. It's often considered harder to win than the economics Nobel, and is a significant predictor of who actually will win the Nobel. Note that this was largely before Krugman got involved in politics, and past winners include Milton Friedman. I doubt his politics helped him win this one.
(2) By most measures of citation impact, Krugman is one of the world's leading economists. E.g., http://ideas.repec.org/top/top.person.nbcites.html
Citations are, of course, an imperfect predictor of the significance of someone's work, this is just an additional data point.
I doubt his involvement in US politics had much impact on the prize.
He's the author of the foremost textbook on international trade (Krugman+Obstfield), and developed models of international trade that every economics major knows (or should, at least).
http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf
I've never laughed so hard that coffee went up my nose while reading an econ paper prior to coming across this one. (Okay, and maybe the first version of the Paulson bailout, but that was a very different sort of laughter.)
"First Fundamental Theorem of Interstellar Trade: When trade takes place between two planets in a common inertial frame, the interest costs on goods in transit should be calculated using time measured by clocks in the common frame, and not by clocks in the frames of trading spacecraft."
and the final line for the kicker:
"Those of us working in this field are still a small band, but we know that the Force is with us."
His NY Times column, however, I feel fit to judge as shrill, unimaginative, vanilla leftism. I'm sure he understands all the criticisms that other economists would level at the policies he supports. The flaws are glaring. Now, it is perfectly honest to acknowledge the existence of those flaws and argue that the benefits of the policy outweigh the drawbacks. However, it is not honest to pretend that such criticisms do not exist.
I could read similar opinion pieces from any leftist without a PHD after his name. The point of reading someone so lettered is that his opinions should be well-argued and therefore interesting, even if you disagree with him. That is rarely the case with Krugman.
I have no doubt that his work in economics will be remembered 50 years from now, and his columns will be long forgot.
2) As someone who advocated the flawed (and now admittedly failed) bailout scam, I'd have to question this
To me this is just politics, since the prize was awarded by one of the central banks to someone strongly advocating their policies...
Doesn't seem very surprising to me given the history of the Nobel committee in the soft sciences and humanities. It will be interesting to see how history views Krugman's accomplishments. I know some of their laureates, like Arafat, didn't hold up so well.
And when did Yasir Arafat win the Nobel prize in Economics? You do realize that the selection committees are entirely different organizations, right? Must everything be a political swipe at conservatives? Isn't it possible that every once in a while one of those lib'ruls might actually produce something useful and be rewarded for it?
Look. Here's another one for you.
Oh, right - it's completely off topic argument bait.
Here's a libertarian economist on some of Krugman's work:
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/10/pauls_nobel_nic....
As a non-economist, one of the ways that I look at their work is to observe when they go 'against the grain' politically: when the left-wing ones argue for free markets, and when the right wing ones argue for intervention.
I'm not an economist. I don't read the guy. I'm sure he's the bees knees and the next best thing to sliced bread.
I simply make the observation that the word is out that the Noble prize is a little myoptic. I've also heard that Krugman has become a reliable shill for the left. So when I heard he got the prize, I laughed. It seemed funny to me.
Maybe I'm completely wrong. Glad to admit it. Let's let history be the judge. Or -- you can accuse me of trolling and downmod the crap out of my comments. I'm not looking for an argument. If you can understand that, we can talk reasonably. If not -- well, you always have that little down arrow to click on, right? That beats saying something intelligent.
Thanks for the reply.
I don't listen to talk radio, I don't visit those sites that were mentioned, and I don't subscribe to anything more political that RealClearPolitics.com. So my comments were in no way meant to be controversial. I thought I had a right to share my amusement (and ignorance, for that matter)
In my opinion, we do the best when we get both sides arguing with each other to find solutions in most of the problems we have. As such, I treasure dearly both my conservative and liberal friends -- ideologies are never completely correct, but honestly comparing different opinions kicks ass, whether its politics or startups.
Basically: you are making a baldly partisan, political argument where none is appropriate. If you admit to not knowing enough to decide for yourself, the proper judge is not "history", but the experts on the committee who do know this stuff quite well.
* Strictly, not true. The economics prize wasn't endowed by Alfred Nobel, but added more recently using funds from the original trust. Or something to that effect.
Look -- I'm ignorant. I've admitted as much. Why not have a reasonable conversation about it instead of all the hand-waving and yelling?
As far as I'm concerned, I was making a blanket statement about Noble prizes in soft sciences and the humanities. It's a generalization. Probably wrong. Guess what? I still get to make it, and I still think it's funny. If you'd like to discuss it reasonably, I'm game.
I'm happy with waiting 20 or 30 years and seeing how Krugman's research does. Are you? Or do we have to settle this now for once and all?
Last I checked, economics is a field with a lot of opinions. How can you be so certain Krugman has such great ideas? Geesh. We're still debating Keynes and Smith, you have to admit there is some room for opinion here, right?
The awards committee cited papers Krugman'd written in 1979, 1981 and 1991 as the basis for their decision.
You can be certain Krugman had such great ideas because his work has been widely cited by other Economists and has been recognized through awards such as the Nobel.
That we're still debating Keynes and Smith only further indicates the far reaching impact of their work.
That we're still debating Keynes and Smith indicate that economics is not like physics -- it has a long way to go. We certainly didn't debate Newton for a century: it was too obvious he was correct. There is lots of room for opinion. QED
I don't like it because it's off topic, as is this whole article. You seem like a pretty reasonable and intelligent guy to me, but there's a good reason politics is taboo: it tends to attract people that aren't so reasonable, that come to sites merely to argue and flame.
If you want to put it in terms of Krugman, consider his NYT columns. Instead of working on more insightful and cutting edge economics, we have a very sharp economist wasting his time saying that "Bush is an idiot". It doesn't take a genius to figure that out or write about it.