Nobel Season is upon us
by Benjamin on October 8, 2009
I have just been given a piece of paper with three blank lines and the heading “Who do you think will get the Nobel”?
This Monday, at 1pm CET, (11am GMT or 7am EST), the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics will be awarded – but to whom? Our department will this year get everyone together and see the press conference live, and then hopefully listen to the cheers as a students out-guesses a professor… Maybe.
I wonder – who do you think will be on that list. I am thinking about it and will send my guesses tomorrow, but I am curious. I don’t see how a financial economist (of any bent) can get the prize this year, and I do not think the time is right for the modern ‘macro’ guys. Last year, after the crisis, Krugman picked it up. After the dot-com bubble burst it also went to people outside the ‘mainstream’ nominations - 2001: Stiglitz and also Akerlof’s melons, 2002: Kahneman. Amartya Sen picked it up right after the Asian Collapse (in 1998), while historians Robert Fogel and Douglass North got it after the 1992 European collapse.
I am not suggesting that the committee doesn’t consider a scholars impact – all of the named people have been highly influential – it just seems that in times of crisis the nominations fall outside the usual suspects?
Could it be time for Benoit Mandelbroit? Axel Leijonhufvud? Deirdre McCloskey? Ben Bernanke? Nouriel Roubini? or is it back to the bookies who seem to be favouring Eugene Fama (2/1) [Ladbrokes], Paul Romer (4/1), Ernst Fehr, Kenneth R. French, William Nordhaus (6/1), Robert Barro (7/1) and further down we find Avinash Dixit, Jagdish N. Bhagwati and Robert Schiller all at 14/1.
Tags: Nobel
Wouldn’t it be absolutely hilarious if Fama would get it now?
They really couldn’t do that, could they?
I am starting to think that Nordhaus might be a good call, what with the resource angle, or maybe Schiller – with his recent finance warnings?
But I think it could go further afield…