
Paul Krugman wins economics Nobel prize - mhb
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/paul-krugman-wins-economics-nobel/?hp
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michael_nielsen
To those people wondering about the influence of politics on Krugman's prize:

(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.

~~~
aneesh
His involvement in politics is largely limited to the past several years. His
main contributions to economics, arguably, have come far before that.

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).

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rcoder
Anyone here who hasn't read Krugman's paper on the economics of interstellar
trade owes it to themselves to do so:

<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.)

~~~
antiform
This is GOLD.

"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."

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mhartl
If you've followed Krugman for long, you've seen this coming for quite a
while. The possibility of his winning an economics Nobel have been rumored for
years. The interesting thing to me is that, when reading his columns, I often
get the sense that Krugman doesn't really _believe_ in economics. He talks a
good economics talk, but he hasn't internalized its lessons. He's like a
brilliant Christian apologist who doesn't believe in Christ.

~~~
mhartl
s/have been/has been

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JoelSutherland
I had the opportunity to hear Krugman speak in 2004 before the election. What
I found surprising was how much he seemed to value his column. It certainly
seemed like he thought it was much more important than his academic work.

~~~
walterk
I think it's extremely important to have academics in constant communication
with the public. Keeps them grounded and their language plain, while the
public can continue to engage with academics long after they've graduated.

------
startingup
There is a different strand of criticism of Krugman (and the neo-Keynesians in
general) that is quite apart from his politics. At some level, this is a
criticism of the modern economic profession itself, and its worship of
mathematical models. This is conceptually analogous to but quite distinct from
the Wall Street addiction to quantitative/stochastic modeling, which is behind
much of the present mess. Krugman represents the pinnacle of that mathematical
tradition. To be fair, Milton Friedman, ideologically the polar opposite of
Krugman, has also faced similar criticism.

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larryfreeman
I have long admired Krugman's analysis. I haven't read his academic work on
economics of scale but if it is of the same quality as his articles, the nobel
prize is well deserved.

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nostrademons
It's funny, I remember someone saying "If Paul Krugman hadn't started spewing
about politics in the NY Times, he probably would've won the Nobel Prize."
Looks like he won it anyway...

~~~
anamax
Since some of the folks who decide the Nobel winners have been quoted that
other decisions were made as a "kick in the leg" at the Bush administration,
Krugman's political columns probably helped him.

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alaskamiller
I find it despicable that people are burning other people's karma for simply
voicing their opinions on a freakin' message board.

------
aswanson
"I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in
human form could have invented the Nobel Prize."

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chaostheory
1) He didn't win a Nobel prize; it's actually the Sveriges Riksbank Prize
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_in_Economics#Relati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_in_Economics#Relation_to_the_Nobel_Prize)

2) As someone who advocated the flawed (and now admittedly failed) bailout
scam, I'd have to question this

~~~
marvin
We don't know whether the bailout plan has failed yet. Calling it a scam is
certainly premature.

~~~
chaostheory
Not really. I call it a scam because it's not limited to just 700 billion.
It's an unlimited raid on the treasury, and even the modified plan still
doesn't have enough transparency. It gives the executive branch even more
power.

To me this is just politics, since the prize was awarded by one of the central
banks to someone strongly advocating their policies...

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mingyeow
i love paul krugman. completely logical , insightful, and comprehendable

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DanielBMarkham
Left-leaning columnist and economist wins Nobel?

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.

~~~
ajross
Krugman is much, much more than a liberal columnist. He got the column
because, unlike most pundits, he has a long track record of interesting work
in his field, and, unlike most eggheads, a knack for and interest in
explaining those issues to the public. If you're reading him only via links
from redstate.com or whatever, you're very much missing the point.

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?

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Just waitin' on history to tell. You can return to your ranting now.

~~~
davidw
Why are we talking about leftists and economics and stuff in this thread?

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....](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/10/pauls_nobel_nic.html)

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.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I'm going to attempt rational discourse. So far you guys don't seem to like it
so much.

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.

~~~
ajross
Again, you seem to be conflating the Nobel _peace_ prize (awarded in Norway by
one committee on the basis of inherently political criteria that you may or
may not find "myopic") with the Nobel prize in _Economics_ * , a prize given
by a completely separate committee in Sweden on the basis of technical
criteria that have been more or less uniformly judged uncontroversial,
objective and non-political. While I'm sure there has been the occasional
argument about who deserves it more, I'm not aware of anyone anywhere who's
made the argument that the economics prize is a "little myopic", nor do I know
who might be spreading that "word" either.

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.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
How can a comment about a committee in Sweden be partisan? Are they running
for some kind of office here? There's nothing partisan here. I'm not
recommending a party, and heck, I like the Swedes.

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?

~~~
talboito
"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?"

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.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Yes I am aware how that it is typical for the committee to cite works from
decades ago.

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

