NO WAY!

Post on October 13, 2008 by Andrea Verykoukis 2 Comments »

Paul Krugman, who is quoted pretty liberally (tee hee) around these parts, has won the Nobel Prize for Economics. He was the sole winner of the prize normally shared by two or three economists, meaning that the Krug (as I like to call him [because I'm really imaginative]) gets to keep the cool $1.4 mil prize all to himself. He won for his dismal scientific merit, of course, not for his opinions, but I still hope more people avail themselves of his wisdom. After all, this proves he’s really, really smart! How smart is he? Not only did he get a PhD just three (3!) years after earning his Bachelor’s, but:

The Bush administration would not comment Monday on whether Krugman would be invited to the White House as is custom with American Nobel laureates.

You know you’re on the right track when the enemies of knowledge and wisdom – or, as he has put it, “the party of the stupid” – don’t want you to come to dinner. Right on, Paul. He didn’t win for that, though. Here’s what the committee had to say about his work:

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences praised Krugman for formulating a new theory to answer questions about free trade and said his theory had inspired an enormous field of research.

‘What are the effects of free trade and globalization? What are the driving forces behind worldwide urbanization? Paul Krugman has formulated a new theory to answer these questions,’ the academy said in its citation.

‘He has thereby integrated the previously disparate research fields of international trade and economic geography,’ it said.”

You can read more about it on his blog, The Conscience of a Liberal. All I can say is, Congratulations!

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Should health care cost you a kidney?

What’s So Bold About the Old?

Comments (Closed):2

Rob Schofield
October 13, 2008 at 1:46 pm
I nominate Krugman to replace Bernanke in 2010.
IBXer
October 15, 2008 at 8:59 am
Dr. Don Boudreaux writes to the Wall Street Journal:

“Like many colleagues who share my appreciation for markets and distrust of government, I’m disappointed with the award of the Nobel Prize to Paul Krugman (“Paul Krugman Wins Economics Nobel,” October 14). My disappointment stems not from objections I have to the work in trade theory for which Krugman won.

Rather, my disappointment is that the Prize gives the most celebrated credential in economics to a man who routinely issues policy recommendations in apparent ignorance of bedrock truths of his discipline.

One of these truths is that resources are not free. Yet on Sept. 14, 2001, Krugman wrote that the need to rebuild following the 9/11 attacks would generate “favorable effects”* for the economy; he forgot that resources used to rebuild would have been used to produce other goods and services that, because of the attacks, were not built. Another truth is the reality of mutual gains from trade: Yet on October 20, 2002, he wrote that if the rich get richer, the poor and middle-class must get poorer as “a matter of arithmetic.”

A person who commits elementary errors such as these when discussing economics ought not be taken seriously. Yet Mr. Krugman’s Prize will add undeserved credence to his policy pronouncements.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University”