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Paul Krugman Awarded Nobel Prize For Economics

zogger writes in his journal, "The guy who put together the concept of geographical location combined with cheap transportation leading to 'like trades with like' and the rise of superindustrial trading blocs has won the Nobel economics science prize. He's a bigtime critic of a lot of this administration's policies, and is unabashedly an FDR-economy styled fella. Here is his blog at the NYTimes." Reader yoyoq adds that Krugman's career choice was inspired by reading Asimov's Foundation series at a young age.

6 of 425 comments (clear)

  1. It's not a Nobel Prize by MSTCrow5429 · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel."

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  2. Re:There is no Nobel Prize in economics by Marcika · · Score: 5, Informative
    It is endowed by the Bank of Sweden, but it is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, same as the science Nobel prizes.

    Besides, it is on the Nobel website, equivalent to all the other prizes. If it's good enough for them...

    So you might be technically right, but only in the pedant's sense.

  3. Re:One more nobel winner anti-reaganmics by MagikSlinger · · Score: 5, Informative

    How many more politicians and faux-news talking heads will continue to push the pseudo-scientific religion that is reaganomics?

    Humans are capable of believing untrue things for a very long time, even after reality begins to seriously challenge those beliefs. The Left has long-cherished beliefs (Example: Unions are good for workers, My Counter-Example: The number of Unions up until the 60s that prohibited blacks from working at a union shop). The Right has its long-cherished beliefs.

    There are a lot of possible explanations why people are like that, but the more important thing is to engage those people by asking questions about the basis of their belief and learning yourself. If someone says something, and you don't know if it's true or not, take some effort to find out if it is. Most of the time, you can Google the issue and find a lot of people have done the hard work for you. You just have to verify if their logic is sound and inferences are valid.

    Krugman, via his blog and columns, does try his best to do this. In fact, he often posts links to early versions of his papers and mathematics on his NY Times blog and lets his readers pick it apart. He and Tyler Cowan (a libertarian leaning economist) have very civil debates via their blogs.

    Most *-wing sites simply tune out contrary voices with more chanting and weak arguments that bolster that community's feelings on right and wrong. In short: people judge arguments by its truthiness, not its validity.

    And for the record, we cannot judge if Reagnomics worked because Reagonomics is:

    1. reduce the growth of government spending,
    2. reduce marginal tax rates on income from labor and capital,
    3. reduce government regulation of the economy,
    4. control the money supply to reduce inflation.

    To be honest, I don't believe he achieved those four goals during his presidency, so I'm not sure one can say Reagonomics worked or not:

    1. Government spending as a percentage of GDP
    2. Tax receipts as percentage of GDP
    3. Quantifying regulation: Notice the Clinton years come out looking pretty good too (i.e., congress is as much to blame/credit as the President)
    4. Inflation from 1913 to present
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  4. Re:Seems like a very cool guy by wrecked · · Score: 5, Informative

    I had a real respect for him when he mentioned he was inspired by Asimov.

    For more geek cred: while at Princeton in 1978, Krugman wrote a tongue-in-cheek paper titled The Theory of Interstellar Trade (PDF) (see Slashdot article on it).

  5. Re:Hayek and Friedman got one too by Rhinobird · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is no Nobel prize in Economics. It's an associated prize, "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel", was instituted by Sweden's central bank in 1968

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sveriges_Riksbank_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences_in_Memory_of_Alfred_Nobel

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  6. citation needed by yali · · Score: 5, Informative

    Some supporting evidence making it hard to fit this prize into an ideological box...

    In his popular writing, including his NY Times column, Krugman is a pretty outspoken liberal on most issues. But within his academic expertise -- which is what he won the prize for -- he is very willing to depart from liberal orthodoxy if that's where logic and evidence lead him.