Wow! Really awesome news!

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2008/

He's also apparently the only winner this year, which is a bit odd I think. It's kind of a break from previous years when several people recieved the award. Plus Paul Krugman was certainly not the only economist studying the implications of increasing returns, which is the cornerstone of his "analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity".

Either way, I'm very pleased to see this pick. Krugman's popular writings (especially the Self-Organizing Economy and Pop Internationalism) were particularly inspirational to me in my undergrad years. I've also been recently trying to get through a textbook he co-authored "The Spatial Economy", since I am working on a few regional development projects at my job. Nothing I've read so far can be readily applied to those projects, but it is helping me understand the forces at work in determining why some regions grow while others remain static.

Anyone got any input on how they feel about the pick??

[Edited on October 13, 2008 at 9:28 AM. Reason : ``]

10/13/2008 9:00:33 AM

It's the economy, stupid!

10/13/2008 9:14:11 AM

It's fortuitous that such a die-hard supporter of Obama just won the Nobel Prize in economics at a time like this.

10/13/2008 9:15:32 AM

The politics of Socks always has puzzled me. Edwards>Clinton>McCain>Krugman (which of these is not like the others)

10/13/2008 9:17:42 AM

Boone,

Yah, that's what I would take away from this. Economics != Politics. At least 5 Nobel Winners have spoken out against Obama saying his proposals are risky for the economy (Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Robert Mundell, Edward Prescott, and Vernon Smith).
http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/News/PressReleases/96557315-1694-4d8f-9b0a-c29f0f0872e6.htm

And technically we have no idea who Paul Krugman supports for President. NYT rules prevent him for endorsing either candidate.

10/13/2008 9:24:15 AM

Quote :

"And technically we have no idea who Paul Krugman supports for President."

If you have any doubt, you clearly don't have his blog in your RSS reader

10/13/2008 9:28:22 AM

How did I know Socks`` would be making this thread?!

10/13/2008 9:35:52 AM

^ 'cause you is strolling me.

10/13/2008 9:44:41 AM

I think it's an excellent pick, good thread, and I like Paul Krugman alot. This will make most conservatives heads explode, which is a bonus.

I know the wingnuts like to call him 'the shrill one' and he was talking shit about the Bush admnistration from the very beginning, but beyond politics - the guy is really fucking smart. Back during the debates when the question was prompted to the candidates who they'd pick for the sec. of the treasury - I thought about him.

10/13/2008 9:45:23 AM

He does look kinda like Ben Bernanke only with hair...

DOPPELGANGER???

10/13/2008 9:46:49 AM

This one goes out to Keynes, who'd probably be posting this if he hadn't graduated.

10/13/2008 9:50:45 AM

Quote :

"Mr. Krugman was the only winner of the award, which includes a prize of about $1.4 million."

Look out, Mr. K. Obama will be coming after your windfall profit.

10/13/2008 10:52:03 AM

I don't think Krugman cares as much as you do.

10/13/2008 10:56:21 AM

I have a lot of respect for Krugman as an economist and don't see anything wrong with his nomination for a Nobel Prize in economics. As for his politics, well, I usually don't pay too much attention to the columns he writes that focus primarily on non-economic issues.

10/13/2008 10:57:26 AM

Quote :

"I don't think Krugman cares as much as you do."

Obama cares. A lot.
He doesn't want rich people to keep all that money they don't need.

10/13/2008 11:17:16 AM

Quote :

"He doesn't want rich people to keep all that money they don't need."

Humans don't have a linear utility function with respect to money.

10/13/2008 11:25:19 AM

^ humans don't have comparable utility functions because utility is not measured in standardized units.

Your statement implies the common fallacy that if we take $100 from Bill Gates and give it to Joe Six Pack we will get a net welfare improvement (because it reduces Bill Gates utility less than it increase Joe Six Packs). However utility cannot be measured on an objective scale. You may say that you are happier with an extra $100 but you cannot say HOW MUCH happier you are (like wise we cannot measure how much less happy Bill Gates will be if you take $100 away from him).

[Edited on October 13, 2008 at 12:58 PM. Reason : ``]

10/13/2008 12:56:29 PM

^ I fully support this supposed fallacy. (The fact that any economist would call it such shows how out of touch economists are.)

10/13/2008 1:00:48 PM

I think Bill Gates would fully support this supposed fallacy, too.

10/13/2008 1:04:01 PM

You never know. Dude might cry if he had a hundred bucks less to spend.

10/13/2008 1:07:36 PM

considering how much he gives away i doubt it

10/13/2008 2:03:08 PM

Boone & GV,

It would not make Bill Gates or anyone else correct. We simply cannot obtain cardinal measures of happiness. Just because you think it would make intuitive sense that a rich guy would be less hurt by the transaction doesn't make it so.

This is one reason that progressives make me nervous. Bill Clinton talked about expanding opportunities, but not equalizing outcomes or directly redistributing wealth (and yes this is EXACTLY what the line argument is about). Too many progressives these days talk about using the government to "correct" income inequality as if they actually KNOW how to make everyone happier--even if they drag you kicking and screaming.

This is yet another fundamental shift from the Democratic Party of the late 1990s to the Democratic party of today.

10/13/2008 2:42:38 PM

I have always been a big fan of Krugman's economic work on many levels, even if I haven't always supported his politics. There is no doubt that he deserves it. In many ways he may be the most brilliant economist of our time.

As a side note and a moment of shameless self-promotion, I had a chance to speak with Krugman when came to NC State a year back and gave a talk on the housing bubble and the future of the USD. After a brief exchange he conceded my point that the US could export services to the rest of the world by increasing rates of foreign relocation to the US which in theory could contribute to closing the current account deficit without net exports of physical goods reaching seemingly unrealistic levels.

10/13/2008 3:00:14 PM

Beyond affecting the brain directly, no action can be assured to produce happiness. I could hardly care less. I'll continue to advocate what I see as beneficial. The lack of certainly doesn't make me completely lost.

10/13/2008 3:13:25 PM

Quote :

"Too many progressives these days talk about using the government to "correct" income inequality"

Wait, so are you arguing that Clinton was a flat taxer?


Btw, your man is stumping pretty hard for Obama.

10/13/2008 3:38:57 PM

Quote :

"Just because you think it would make intuitive sense that a rich guy would be less hurt by the transaction doesn't make it so. "

There was a guy in the news once who used to scream at his family if they flushed the toilet instead of bucketing their excrement. He didn't want to pay for anything at all, so they didn't run their electricity and didn't use their water unless absolutely necessary (to him, it wasn't necessary to pay for the water it took to flush your poop).

He cared about his money so much that it was excruciatingly painful for him to pay for a toilet flush, even though he had multiple tens of millions of dollars. Do you really think that it's reasonable for us to use him to calibrate our decision rule instead of the average human, for which it IS in fact demonstrable that utility vs. money is NOT linear?

10/13/2008 3:45:56 PM

God, I hate the Nobel prize. There is one reason why he won it this year, and it isn't based on merit.

Not that he couldn't win it on merit, though I'm not sure he should have, but it's pretty obvious why he was selected.

10/13/2008 3:52:23 PM

Because of the papers who wrote on International trade back in the 1970s; because that is why he won it. claiming anything else makes you a conspiratory idiot.

10/13/2008 3:58:04 PM

The Nobel committees are pretty notorious for selecting awards for political reasons...

10/13/2008 4:06:17 PM

kwsmith2

Quote :

"As a side note and a moment of shameless self-promotion, I had a chance to speak with Krugman when came to NC State a year back and gave a talk on the housing bubble and the future of the USD. After a brief exchange he conceded my point that the US could export services to the rest of the world by increasing rates of foreign relocation to the US which in theory could contribute to closing the current account deficit without net exports of physical goods reaching seemingly unrealistic levels."

I would agree that sounds possible. But wouldn't you have to assume a relatively high amount of labor mobility for this to work? If so, wouldn't that be kind of taking away the major assumption that makes international economics different from regional economics (specifically that labor is relatively immobile)?

It seems to me, that the only reason any level of net exports of physical goods would seem "unrealistic" is because resources cannot flow costlessly from the other sectors to export manufacturing sectors (which I guess could be a problem if the dollar was to crash like Krugman feared a few years back). And it seems to me that the same complaint would apply to what you're suggesting.

Of course, I could be misunderstanding something.

[Edited on October 13, 2008 at 5:32 PM. Reason : ``]

10/13/2008 5:20:03 PM

interesting perspective on the Nobel Prize in Economics from F.A. Hayek back in 1974:

Quote :

"Friedrich August von Hayek's speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1974 Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, Now that the Nobel Memorial Prize for economic science has been created, one can only be profoundly grateful for having been selected as one of its joint recipients, and the economists certainly have every reason for being grateful to the Swedish Riksbank for regarding their subject as worthy of this high honour. Yet I must confess that if I had been consulted whether to establish a Nobel Prize in economics, I should have decidedly advised against it. One reason was that I feared that such a prize, as I believe is true of the activities of some of the great scientific foundations, would tend to accentuate the swings of scientific fashion. This apprehension the selection committee has brilliantly refuted by awarding the prize to one whose views are as unfashionable as mine are. I do not yet feel equally reassured concerning my second cause of apprehension. It is that the Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess. This does not matter in the natural sciences. Here the influence exercised by an individual is chiefly an influence on his fellow experts; and they will soon cut him down to seize if he exceeds his competence. But the influence of the economist that mainly matters is an influence over laymen: politicians, journalists, civil servants and the public generally. There is no reason why a man who has made a distinctive contribution to economic science should be omnicompetent on all problems of society - as the press tends to treat him till in the end he may himself be persuaded to believe. One is even made to feel it a public duty to pronounce on problems to which one may not have devoted special attention. I am not sure that it is desirable to strengthen the influence of a few individual economists by such a ceremonial and eye-catching recognition of achievements, perhaps of the distant past. I am therefore almost inclined to suggest that you require from your laureates an oath of humility, a sort of hippocratic oath, never to exceed in public pronouncements the limits of their competence. Or you ought at least, on confering the prize, remind the recipient of the sage counsel of one of the great men in our subject, Alfred Marshall, who wrote: "Students of social science, must fear popular approval: Evil is with them when all men speak well of them"."

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1974/hayek-speech.html

10/13/2008 5:42:33 PM

Quote :

"The Nobel committees are pretty notorious for selecting awards for political reasons..."

In the Peace Prize, not in the sciences.

10/13/2008 5:52:03 PM

bump

9/29/2010 9:33:06 PM

did he win another Nobel

9/29/2010 9:37:06 PM

Wtf, he calls for massive more spending and pretends like debt doesn't exist, now he saying defaults are inevitable?

Can this guy do anything else to kill his credibility (did he have any?)?

Forgot da link

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/default-is-in-our-stars/

[Edited on September 29, 2010 at 10:21 PM. Reason : linky]

9/29/2010 10:15:50 PM

I dunno...This is America. Christians rule here and debt is pretty repugnant to them; nevermind enough debt to trigger a default.

9/30/2010 10:09:53 AM

He's saying we can straight up default, or we can inflate away the debt, which is effectively a default. I agree completely. Are you guys realizing how fucked we are yet?

9/30/2010 11:36:09 AM

We can't inflate away our obligations to SS, Medicare and Medicaid which are brilliantly indexed to inflation.


GG PK, you're wrong again.

9/30/2010 11:51:48 AM