My Nobel Econ 2011 prediction

I say "Ernst Fehr, Matthew Rabin, and Richard Thaler for their contributions to behavioral economics" (I even bet 3$ on this, but for some yet unclear reason that pool has closed, with my money returned). In any case, I think it would be highly suspicious if I got it right also this time, given I got it perfectly last year and almost perfectly the year before that.

PS. By the way, as you must have noticed, although I've momentarily reduced the frequency of my blogposts, I've been posting brief impressions on my twitter. 

Econlinks: The Dale T. Mortensen Nobel edition

• The most recent event under this heading is the Northwestern conference in the honor of Dale-- with some very good and some not so good presentations...-- featuring also some  very (and some not so) entertaining speeches by former Mortensen students, co-authors, advisers etc, either at the dinner at the Northwestern Allen Center on Friday evening, or at the drinks & snacks session at Beverly and Dale's splendid home (photo with Ija on their balcony) on Saturday evening. Read also this Northwestern Univ. article about the event.  If you ask me, Guido Menzio had both the most interesting presentation ("Social Insurance for Frictional Wage Inequality") and by far the best speech (let us call it "Guido, may the Force be with you!"); unfortunately, neither of them is available online, too bad if you were not there.
• Now rewind: I have first mentioned about Dale's Prize here, as some of us really were with Dale in Denmark when he got the magic phone call (this happened after I had correctly predicted Diamond, Mortensen and Pissarides winning the Prize in Economic Sciences, the day before). I'll try to organize the following links on chronological order since.
• Listen to the initial phone interview between the Nobel Foundation's Adam Smith and Dale (you might have heard about the funny Adam Smith phone call to Ned Phelps's home some years before; people are somewhat more prepared to Adam Smith calling them since...).
• Here's Dale's answering machine message about the Prize to Beverly Mortensen: have your sound on as well-- this is super funny.
• I have uploaded on Flickr one of my short videoclips from the John Abowd seminar in Aarhus, at the Aarhus School of Business (ASB), Dep of Econ building, which started with champagne for Dale (unfortunately the sound seems to have gotten lost on the way...). All spontaneusly organized my myself, Valerie and Frederic: I think we managed quite well. I even made sure these visiting guys were not missing the start of the party (even if Shimer thought I am trying to trick him to get him to the seminar--duh..., Rob!...-- when I called with the Dale-won-the-Nobel news)
• The first Aarhus Univ journalist & photographer arrived for Dale (hallway of the ASB's Frichshuset) and here's a very first Dale video interview, just outside the Frichshuset, in which Dale tells the Danish reporter that yes, the Danes can also feel proud because of his winning the Prize.
• After a first full day of interviews and photo sessions for Dale, the first dinner party takes place at one of my very favorite restaurant in Aarhus, Klassisk 65. Thanks to Valerie for helping me with the organization (we had planned the dinner at Klassisk for that day in any event; with Dale winning the Prize in that day, we had to try hard to include more people on the reservation list, and plan in  much more detail). Watch the official TV2 documentary (very slow, be patient) from the place, including the by now famous Dale-sabring-the-champagne-bottle moment(s). I uploaded one of my own videoclips from Klassisk as well (again no sound). 
• A nice video capturing Dale's returning to Chicago from Denmark, with family and the NU brass band welcoming him at O'Hare. 
• One advantage of being  affiliated both with Aarhus and Northwestern is that I got to participate in all the Dale Mortensen-parties! Obviously Northwestern had to rise up to the occasion, and I think they managed well: there were several events, including two parties--one Department of Economics-wide, one NU-wide -- organized in relation to Dale's winning the Prize. Here's the best moment from the first NU party, where, having heard of Dale's champagne-sabring demonstration in Denmark, he was asked to confirm his skills also in Evanston-- and I had the honor to assist (clip borrowed from Jeff Ely on Cheaptalk). Here's a fantastic picture, the ultimate proof of Dale's champagne-sabring mastery! 
• An article with a link to a clip containing the best moments from the NU-wide reception for Dale; Janice Eberly and Bob Coen in particular prepared wonderful speeches. Some other NU press articles with video- and photo- links: Dale winning the Nobel and first reactions from NU Econ faculty colleagues, summary of and photos from the celebrations in Stockholm; see also some other Dale Mortensen photos from Stockholm and not only, collected on the Nobel Foundation site.
• There are also by-products of winning a Nobel prize, such as: getting a whisky bottle and-- if, justifiably, you thought that was no big deal-- a whole building named after him, at Aarhus University (with the participation at the opening, of the other Nobel Laureate at Aarhus, Jens Skou, and of the DK crown prince) ; a permanent parking spot and some other very visible (temporary) honors, at Northwestern University; hanging around with Mr. President-- good, better (my own photo capture of the framed pictures adorning the walls in the Mortensens' apartment). 
• You can also check out some more related pictures and videos that I collected (some belong to Aarhus University, some to Northwestern University, some to the Nobel Foundation, some are mine --including from the Econ Prize lectures, which I watched live, online, on my laptop, from Chicago-- I tried to specify everywhere whom they belong to  in order to observe copyright issues-- comment on this post or contact me if you observe anything wrong or unclear in that sense) and uploaded on my Flickr acount.
• Finally: the best way to learn (more) about last year's Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel is to browse through the corresponding pages on the Nobel Foundation's website. There is a great wealth of material in there (and more will be uploaded in the future, including, e.g., autobiographies of the Laureates), such as informative articles-- both brief and longer--, interviews, documentaries, photos etc. For instance, you can read what the 2010 Prize in Economic Sciences is about in a popular version for the larger audience (related, a "speed read" version; even an "illustrated" version); you can also go on and inspect the more detailed, technical, version with further references (or go through the concise three-page version by Rob Shimer); see also an interview with Per Krussell describing the work of the 2010 Econ Nobel Laureates; watch a documentary about the lives and work of the three Laureates; a video interview of the three Econ Prize winners with Adam Smith (including opinions about teaching and training their graduate students, I thought that was very informative!); watch the Econ Prize lectures of Mortensen, Diamond, Pissarides; the Banquet Speech of Dale (on behalf of the three Economics Prize winners) etc.

George Stigler could do anything--anything but be boring

 [...] I must out of courtesy and caution reserve judgment on any laws that Professor Stigler may unveil. For, as I learned when our friendship began long ago, George Stigler can do anything-- anything but be boring.

-Paul Samuelson-

Here's the Sunday read I recommend to you: a great 1963 dialogue on the "proper economic role of the state" between two intellectual giants, George Stigler(*, **) and Paul Samuelson. More actual than ever. If only all current policy and academic debates had this flavor!

* inspired by Steven Landsburg's recent blogposts on Stigler, here and here. Echoing Landsburg, you must absolutely read Stigler's "The Intellectual and the Marketplace" and "Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist", if you haven't already done so. Indeed, he would likely be the champion of all Econ bloggers.

** read fast Milton Friedman's short biographical essay on Stigler and Stigler's 1982 Nobel prize lecture "The process and progress of economics"

Econlinks: On crises. And opportunities

• Crises and opportunities in Balkan science policy (start, more). A word of caution for my Romanian pals, among whom a new risk of self-denying optimism-- expected to turn into the usual complacency-- appears contagious: con calma, this is at best a mediocre start (though, granted, a start it is). Not to mention that before reaching (competing with?) the West, the East needs to tackle (be inspired by?) the more (and increasingly so) academically attractive South.
• ...in which it is revealed that crises may hide huge opportunities. Earlier on the Kseniya phenomenon.
• A wealth of economic ideas? Taxing prostitution in the Netherlands and witchcraft in Romania.  Good luck.
• Chess crisis: what did they give Magnus to drink/smoke in Holland?! In words.
• Opportunities? Best predictors of the number of heterosexual sex partners.
• Somebody save Maastricht, tourists will desert it. 
• In praise of reading and fiction: Mario Vargas Llosa like no other. Also, hopes that the Literature Nobel Committee has finally decided to do a Nobel Committee job.

Dale

Not that I want to brag or anything but... please check this out again and then go to the Nobel prize site to see who won this year's Prize in Economics (by the way, last year I predicted Hart, Holmstrom and Williamson, hence I also got there one of the awardees-- just in case you were wondering if I predict the same every single year).  

Anyway, while you can check out all the press release on the 2010 Econ Nobel prize directly from the source etc., some very brief and fast personal points on Dale Mortensen. I feel privileged to currently have Dale as my postdoctoral guide and host at Northwestern University (and to have known him over the years, particularly via the LMDG research group in Aarhus, but in fact already from my PhD years at the Tinbergen Institute Amsterdam--when probably in 2003 or so I took my first search and matching short course with him teaching it); I am also grateful to have taken part in several events organized by Beverly and Dale Mortensen in Chicago/Evanston; and, it so happened that I was having lunch with Dale and a couple of others here in Aarhus-- yep, you have to be in the right place, at the right time!-- some hours ago (and minutes before the actual Nobel prize announcement) when he received that phone call from Stockholm. That is pretty amazing, you know, to be part of this very moment... all that suspense and then the smiling confirmation... with Dale stating he is not supposed to acknowledge anything yet :-)... Thus we started John Abowd's invited seminar here at the Aarhus School of Business (of course Dale went on with attending undisturbed the seminar-- a scientist to the end!) with champagne and the live online Econ Prize announcement from Sweden.

Finally, at this very moment they do not seem to have put up a picture of Dale on the Nobel prize site yet (while they have found portraits of Peter Diamond and Chris Pissarides), so I'll just place up a photo with Dale and Beverly in their kitchen in Evanston, this summer, preparing to serve (some very lucky) us an absolutely delicious Mexican dish. Congratulations once again, Dale Mortensen!

PS. Pictures/videos from after the prize announcement might follow late...r on, depending when/if I have time to actually sort them out.

My 2010 Nobel Econ Prediction

Some names are recurrent in the betting pools, but-- as usually-- it does not appear that anybody has a very clear favourite for this year's Economics Nobel, and that seems true even in terms of the Econ area(s) to be currently rewarded. Thomson Reuters' predictions are sampled from a pretty varied set topic-wise. Harvard , Chicago and Northwestern / Kellogg  seem all to be somewhat home biased for the leading pick, though with very heterogeneous faculty preferences in the rest. And when the experts disagree to this extent, you will rightly ask yourselves if there is any point in attempting a forecast.

But, as you came here anxious to get my prediction for tomorrow: I think it is high time search theory was recognized for its significant contributions to a great many Econ subdisciplines (inter alia, search is responsible for crucial modelling advances in Labour Economics, Consumer Theory, Monetary Theory, and way beyond) -- with Peter Diamond, Dale Mortensen and Chris Pissarides as its very deserving pioneers. This was my favourite option also last year, but I assign it a much higher probability of success now. That being said, I hope Dale would not change the dinner plans tomorrow evening  if he does get the phone call :-).

Weekend Econlinks

• Science Q&A with the female Nobelists this year.

• EMH: it really ain't dead. (via Mankiw)

• Harvard's financial report for 2009. And some of the (dire) consequences.

• Head hunting for a (younger than Mas-Colell...legal requirement, apparently) distinguished scientist to be the European Research Council's new Director.

• the NAJ Ain't a Journal of Economics. I can't understand why I find about it only now, this looks extremely interesting (via cheaptalk).

• High time for the Viking to break through! And a funny interview after the Nanjing show off. (via Susan Polgar)

• Levitt did pretty well on The Daily Show (he also did well on the Colbert Report a great while ago). Though I am rather puzzled by his statement "I am not a scientist"; I wonder whether he thinks that a. Economics is not a science, or else b. what he does is not Economics..., or else...?

• Landsburg is blogging. And he's got a couple of great posts already. Here's one of them, on Dawkins, and the origins of complexity.

• Cancer progress might be completely different than known so far.

• Polygamy preferred from any angle. Reminds me of Becker's arguments a while ago (2nd bullet point)-- by the way, they now made a book of the Becker-Posner blogposts.

• The death of the book as we knew it!/? And some nostalgia after book browsing.

Sunday econlinks

• An interesting debate in the latest issue of Capitalism and Society on the current status of Economics and other Social Sciences, worth reading especially for the two comments to the leading article on the theme. Unfortunately, Jon Elster, in his "Excessive Ambitions", otherwise a welcome (and relatively informed) outsider's critique, does not manage to rise up to his declared ambitions of debunking the status quo / portraying "the persistence in the economic profession and elsewhere of these useless or harmful models", and eventually falls easy prey to his commenters: Pierre-André Chiappori (who, very elegantly, but unmistakenly, tackles most of the points raised by Elster in his criticism of economic theory and testing its predictions) and respectively, David Hendry (who virtually destroys Elster's line of reasoning and conclusions on empirical modelling in Economics). To add up to that, beyond the many (surprising!) fallacies that Elster commits in his scientific criticism (not even half of them acknowledged, e.g. his sole reliance on third-party sources in the discussion of the criticism to the empirics is somewhat revealed, however the very selected sample of those sources --strategy common also to his earlier sections-- does not seem at all problematic to the author), what strikes me throughout his text is his often bringing up the lack of "humility" of economists (e.g., "The competence of economists may not be in question, but their humility is"), although in reading his piece I was rather intrigued by Elster's own absence of humility whatsoever in his strongly opinionated, though insufficiently argued, assessment... I was really hoping for something more serious.
• Solving the public-goods free rider problem using neuronal measures of economic value. Looks super interesting!
• "[D]oes conspicuous consumption fall and efficiency increase in a society in which income is conspicuous?" or some of the potentially positive implications (research-wise only...) of Norway's recent crazy move to make public all tax records of its (tax-paying) residents...
• Even Robert Parker can make a total mess of himself when it comes to wine blind tasting (via cheaptalk). And a short review of a new wine book by somebody who really doesn't like Parker (thanks to Fred for the link).
• "Wellicht komt er ooit een nieuw paradigma dat voor de economische wetenschap net zo revolutionair zal zijn als kwantummechanica is geweest voor de natuurkunde. Tot die tijd is het beter om te blijven schipperen met de kapstokken die we hebben in plaats van alles jassen op één grote hoop te gooien." door Wouter den Haan, op MeJudice
• An older interview with the foremost cafeteria Keynesian (Part 1, Part 2). I only agree with about 50% of what he's saying here... And I think some are just too fast in dismissing Milton Friedman, but... on verra.
• Norman Manea on Herta Muller's Literature Nobel. Though ultimately there isn't much in there about her Nobel..., which might actually be the whole idea of that post.
• Brinkmann, Ehrman and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Very interesting, all news to me.
• Is shouting the new spanking? Hopefully not.
• I generally agree, though, for instance, Econophysicists seem to have a hard time both on the Economics and on the Physics academic/ publishing market. Not that I wonder much why that is the case, but others may...
  

Econlinks

• Eric Maskin on the financial crisis (Mankiw, Cheaptalk and MR link to this interview, among others). Maskin is one of the smartest persons alive, so this is mandatory-- a must read in particular for those who'd like to crucify all economic theorists :-). I would also link however to a very interesting blogpost by Harald Uhlig, on VoxEU (a summary of his recent NBER working paper): he really extends the Diamond and Dybvig (1983) bank run model that Maskin starts with, such that it incorporates the stylized facts specific to the current financial crisis. Uhlig also makes very clear that this is just one way to view things and in fact that insolvency rather than illiquidity might have been the main culprit: "It is possible that the appropriate perspective is one of insolvency rather than illiquidity, and future research will hopefully sort this out."

• Of course Oliver Hart should have won this year's Nobel as well (and Bengt Holmstrom). I cannot but agree with Aghion here, as I made clear in my prediction for the Econ Nobel within the last 3 years... Returning to Elinor Ostrom, there are by now many reactions. Most of them seem to be as confused /skeptical as I was after the release of the results, e.g. Ely, Baliga, Levitt (I disagree with Levitt's "suspicion" that most young economists also did not hear about Williamson), to some extent even Cowen ("I was delighted to hear of Ostrom winning (which I had not expected) but frankly it makes the omission of Gordon Tullock all the more glaring" ) or Krugman ("I wasn’t familiar with Ostrom’s work"); nevertheless Economists who work /worked in public choice and related (the tragedy of the commons, in particular) seem delighted with the choice, e.g. Spence, Glaeser, Romer, Smith, Tabarrok, Gächter (the latter cited in this Science short article on the Econ Nobels). The conclusion of all this (once again) is that I really have to read Ostrom's main works sometime in the near future (meanwhile I also found out that apparently she's got at least one article in a mainstream Economics journal)-- and to accept that yes, to a great extent, we are all very ignorant.

• The professors who rock Harvard.

• Bucharest in 1961 . Plus photos from all UNESCO World Heritage sites in Romania (both via RomAlien)

• An analysis of journal submission strategies. I didn't have the time to follow in detail their analysis, but the conclusion is sensible:

"The journal submission process is a controversial and stressful part of academia. There are many dimensions of uncertainty, and bad decisions could greatly delay publication of important results and harm one's career. This paper provides new evidence that, on the whole, the advice supplied to young faculty members by veterans of academia is correct. Authors largely have an incentive to submit first to the best journals and then subsequently, wortk their way down a schedule of journals. The exceptions to this simple rule occur when authors are particularly impatient or risk-averse.

We also note, however, that the efficiency of the system may be improved by a system in which journals reduce time lags, perhaps through incentive-based rewards for faster reviewing by referees, and increase submission fees. This system reduces the impact of time-lags on impatient or risk averse authors and more efficiently rations submissions to journals- higher reward journals will get more submissions of high-quality papers and fewer submissions of low-quality papers. This also streamlines the publication process, shortening the time during which important results are sitting on a desk, waiting for publication. "

Half of a Nobel

Certainly Williamson was expected to win sooner or later (sooner rather than later), in fact I predicted him to be winning, yesterday (and a year ago, and two years ago...). But then together with Hart and Holmstrom.... Honestly, I have to say that I have never heard of Elinor Ostrom, before discussing whether I have read anything of what she's written. But perhaps it is high time I found out more about her work-- before I decide to call half of this prize a flop, just as the Literature and the Peace Nobels this year (what happened with these Nobel committees?!...)... Meanwhile congratulations to Oliver Williamson of course; this is a very deserved and, in fact, very delayed honour!

Nobel Econ prediction(s)

After the Nobel flops for Literature (Herta Müller is ok..., but the Eurocentrism of the Nobel Literature commitee remains obvious; e.g. how can you still keep out Philip Roth or Michael Ondaatje, that after having ignored all US & Canadian top writers for the last several decades?! ) and Peace (I guess nobody beats Greg Mankiw in describing that), let us hope for a vindication with the '09 Nobel Economics prize.

It's simple, I will be consistent :-), thus my bet for tomorrow is: Hart, Holmstrom and Williamson for their contribution to the theory of the firm. This despite that others/ more or less official odds would suggest otherwise (see for instance Thomson Reuters, Ladbrokes, Kellogg & Northwestern), and although my personal favourite is Dale Mortensen (for developing search theory, with Peter Diamond and Chris Pissarides). Of course you might know that I am part of Dale's LMDG group in Aarhus and for instance just returned from a great conference program he put together in Sandbjerg, but, bias aside :-), I cannot imagine search theory not being rewarded with the Nobel within the next couple of years.

(Many) Econlinks

• Brief but pertinent thoughts of Ricardo Caballero on the (real) causes and solutions to the current financial crisis.

• Language politicization in Central and Eastern Europe (via Andrew Gelman)

• Bill Easterly (and colleagues) have just started a very promising blog, Aid Watch. And talking about Development Economics, check out a very flattering portrait of one of its (if not the) young stars.

• Mr. Inflation goes public again (he featured on this blog before). Hat tip to Tyler Cowen, on MR.

• Dan Hamermesh ask the $64000 question: who changes the kissing rules? NB: having lived for quite a while in The Netherlands (and there again for two months, in a week!), I count myself one of the non-Dutch experts in three-cheek kissing :-).

• Not sure I immediately agree with Alex Tabarrok; some people believe the Nobel in Economics should be given only every 4 years... The John Bates Clark medal was fine somewhere in between, every two years. Will the Yrjö Jahnsson- EEA award also change to annual rather than biennial frequency?...

• I've only found out about this recently, via Tyler Cowen on MR. It should answer many of Jim Heckman's detractors. Obviously, as a student of Jim Heckman in that Oxford summer course of 2005 that he mentions (organized by David Hendry and Bent Nielsen, at Nuffield College), I could be biased (inter alia, that course was one of the best short courses I ever took; moreover, I guess I also publicly declared that I am a Heckman fan-- in Romanian). But in any case I think the material Heckman posted on his site for everybody's perusal ought to be clarifying enough, for everybody...

• Ranking The Beatles' songs (again via the cool guys at MR, who else?). This looks (at least goal-wise) a similar endeavour to the project (also very controversial... and heavily criticized...) of David Galenson, mentioned a while ago on this blog. Would just add that I definitely agree with number 1 being Number 1 in this Beatles song top, ie. the beyond-brilliant "A Day in the Life", but I would also clearly place "Strawberry Fields Forever" second... and I would further interchange quite a few positions in top 30... and quite a lot of positions further down... So much for the "consensus of taste" :-).

And the winner is...

... Paul Krugman, "for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity"! One of the younger/est Econ Nobel prize winners (perhaps second youngest after Ken Arrow). The official announcement. Definitely deserved, though I would have thought he'd get the prize somewhat later and perhaps not alone. The political context clearly favoured him this year (always utterly opposed to the Bush administration(s) and to the Republicans in general :-)).

PS. Got my prediction wrong, but so did Thomson Reuters and a lot of other betting agencies :-).

Econ Nobel '08: My prediction

Some two hours before they should officially announce it, here's my prediction for this year's Economics Nobel:

The 2008 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel goes to Oliver Hart, Bengt Holmstrom and Oliver Williamson for their contributions to the theory of the firm.

Now, this is not very original, since I predicted the same, obviously without success, last year :-). Let's see. It's either this or the macro side (Barro et al). Finance rather unlikely this year (Fama, French etc), though obviously deserved in the very near future.

PS. Steven Levitt seems to have spotted a proxy for who (among potential candidates) thinks will get the Economics Nobel, i.e. people who get a haircut shortly before the announcement :-).

Nobel(s) '08

Far more important than the forthcoming US Presidential Election is the awarding of the Nobel titles this year. The official Nobel prizes will be awarded starting next Monday (see the schedule). As usually this blog's author is mostly (though not exclusively, eg. I've always followed the Physics prizes, too) interested in the Economics prize, which is to be awarded last, on Monday, October 13; my prediction should appear here at least a day before -- and no, unfortunately I don't get any private signals... :-). Meanwhile, see also the Thompson Reuters predictions (alternatives) for the Economics (and not only) 2008 winners.

On the wackier side of science, an Economist already won a "Nobel" this year. Namely, Dan Ariely just won the IG Nobel for Medicine: "the prize for medicine goes to the enterprising economist who found that expensive fake pills work better than cheap [fake] ones". At the same time, the IG Nobel for Economics was won by three evolutionary psychologists (ironically...), Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tyber, and Brent Jordan, "for discovering that exotic dancers earn more when at peak fertility" (more here). See the list of all Nobel IG prizes this year; 'official site' here. And here's an article about the recent winners (via Greg Mankiw).

Econlinks this week

• Enter Neuroeconomics...once again.

• An excellent obituary for Leo Hurwicz, by Eric Maskin. Turns out it was indeed great timing to award him the Nobel last year (Hurwicz is the oldest Nobelist to date).

• Apparently, the Harvard Society of Fellows are (were) not so great wine tasters :-)-- interesting story and excellent experiment by Steven Levitt, on Freakonomics

• New business idea: trading in soccer talent. Brazilian, for the moment.

• Ed Glaeser with a well done overview of Ehrlich & Ehrlichs' new book. And a conclusion that one can only hope will resonate with many: "Ironically, the very success of environmental alarmism has convinced many of us that the environment is too important to be left to the environmentalists."

• The Cowles Foundation Monographs online!

• The secret to a happy marriage is to be annoying. I sort of vaguely start to understand my parents...

• Greg Mankiw on "What if the US presidential candidates pandered to economists?" . And don't be too cynical.

My whereabouts

I'll be less active with blogging these days since I am attending the Society of Labor Economists annual meeting (at Columbia University this year). I'll present this (preliminary and incomplete; comments very welcome; check my website periodically for updated future versions). For the rest, the Big Apple still impresses me, though I've paid a lot on taxis already :-).

Long PS. Yesterday, completely not linked to the conference above (actually he did not know about it), I met, was introduced to, and exchanged a few impressions with Bob Solow and his wife, at a welcome party organized by Niels, who also happens to be one of my co-authors for the paper linked above. And a brief, fast opinion: Solow is a super nice guy, far more humble when compared to all the Nobel prizers I previously met and always eager to open new subjects of conversation --and no, it wasn't so much about economics, if that is what you think :-). So my NY experience didn't start too bad. BTW, if you didn't read Solow's work (which also, obviously, means that you are not an economist...), retain at least that I've been using his quote related to Milton Friedman quite a lot, most recently in an "economics-popularization" presentation I gave last year in Copenhagen (read about that event here, check out the presentation here, both in Romanian however) :-).

Econlinks for 21 Oct '07

• Preston McAfee brings a second noteworthy innovation to Economic Inquiry (I also blogged about the first one since he came as editor to that journal): "We now have a miscellany section. Miscellany operates like the JPE section of the same name, publishing humor and curiosities. Humor is purely a taste determination and being funny for an academic is like being tall for a dwarf. Submissions for the miscellany should indicate so on the manuscript. A good idea is to title the paper "Miscellany: The Simple Economics of Complexity." " The quote was from the the page on the policies of the Economic Inquiry. See more on this from the new editor of the Economic Inquiry humor section (with hints of how humorous that would be).

• Greg Mankiw with some super interesting links to new papers on our genetic sense of fairness (the papers he is talking about are published in the PNAS and respectively, Science).

• The Right vs. Left Brain test (via Tyler Cowen on MR). I have to confess that I only see the ballerina spin clockwise, no matter how hard I try to spot also the reverse spinning (apparently most people can only see the anti-clockwise spinning: that is very curious for me). Right hemisphere use and risk taking behaviour it is, then (the rest of the characteristics associated with one or the other type are pure speculation, I'd say).

• The economics of gold digging, via Steven Levitt. The most interesting part is Levitt's discussion of the initial female Craiglist post and the succesive male answer. In particular the following Levitt quote should be saved for future reference; it suggests there is still hope in this profession, despite the initial odds :-)

"I wouldn’t expect male economists to marry very well. Firstly, they tend to think like the guy who wrote this letter. Secondly, they tend to be nerds. Thirdly, they make very little money when they are young because they get so much education, even though their lifetime income is quite high. Yet I think it is fair to say that the economists I know have married stunningly well (myself included). We’ve all been puzzling over this fact for the fifteen years I have been in the profession. As of yet, no one has come up with a good explanation. I doubt it could be perfect foresight on the part of the women we marry."

• A concise Economist article (relatively easy read, I'd say, also for those outside academia or Economics) on the three Nobel Economists of this year. See also my previous post on the winners, with links to their homepages.

And the Econ winners for 2007 are...

.... Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson, for "having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory". See more about this on nobelprize.org. Totally deserved, albeit they were not among the ones with the highest odds this year (so don't bet next time...). My (wrong) forecast can be a choice for one of the future years, though perhaps not for the next one or two.

My prediction for the Economics prize tomorrow

All right, here we go, as promised:

• The 2007 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel goes to Oliver Hart, Bengt Holmstrom and Oliver Williamson for their contributions to the theory of the firm.

Let's see how good of a forecast this is; in any case I am 100% sure that I will be able to refer back to this prediction for any future year, sooner or later they'll get the Nobel :-).