The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
has decided to award the
Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in
Memory of Alfred Nobel
2008
to
Paul Krugman
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ, USA
"for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity"
The Undercover Economist covers Krugman here, Marginal Revolution here, Greg Mankiw here, the Mises Economics Blog here, Peter Boettke here, Oxonomics here.
Update: More comments: from Russ Roberts here, Peter J. Boettke again here, Robert Higgs here, Justin Fox here, Justin Wolfers here, Peter Klein here, Arnold Kling here and here, Bryan Caplan here, Johan Norberg here, Will Wilkinson here, Edward L. Glaeser here.
More updates: More comments by Michael F. Cannon here, Sallie James here. James makes a good point
I have my concerns with Prof. Krugman’s later work and his tendency to allow his political views to trump economic good sense. As the Economist [$] wrote in 2003 “A glance through his past columns reveals a growing tendency to attribute all the world’s ills to George Bush…Even his economics is sometimes stretched…” He is generally considered to be a big-government liberal. But the prize was not awarded for his NYT columns or his opinions on economic or foreign policy.Alex Tabarrok here.
2 comments:
I like this point from Oxonomics.
I would have imagined a nobel prize going to endogenous growth theory or to incomplete contracts and the theory of the firm before it went to the new economic geography.
I don't know enough about Krugman's work to have any opinion on its value, but he has come out with some howlers in the popular press in the last few years, blinded by his displeasure at Bush.
This plus the timing of the prize, three months before Bush's departure, makes this award a political statement. They could have waited a year or, with Krugman's youth, 10 years and avoided any such controversy. Needlessly, they went now.
I wonder if the President will have Krugman over to the White House to celebrate.
Matt: Yes I liked that comment as well. If only because I had the same thought myself. All three of the ideas mentioned could/should have had a prize given for them before Krugman. But, on the other hand, from what I know of Krugman's trade work it is of the standard that a Nobel is not out of the question. I do however agree with you in the they could have waited 10 years.
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