Economists
From The New York Times this morning:
The 2010 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was awarded on Monday to Peter A. Diamond, Dale T. Mortensen and Christopher A. Pissarides for their work on markets where buyers and sellers have difficulty finding each other, in particular in labor markets.
For decades, the researchers have studied what happens when a market is not made up of identical, cookie-cutter units — as is the case with the job market, where workers have different skills and weaknesses, and where all companies have different types of jobs they need to fill. In many cases, there are significant search costs to finding the ideal match between a buyer and a seller of a good, like the job to a job-seeker.
Well deserved all around. This is the takeaway from the article (emphasis added):
The New York Times reports that Paul Samuelson, the most important academic economist of the 20th century, has passed away. The lengthy obituary is a worthwhile read. As a graduate student at MIT in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I met Paul Samuelson but did not get to know him. His influence was evident, though, and I give Michael Weinstein of the Times credit for concluding his article this way:
Despite his celebrated accomplishments, Mr. Samuelson preached and practiced humility. The M.I.T. economics department became famous for collegiality, in no small part because no one else could play prima donna if Mr. Samuelson refused the role, and, of course, he did. Economists, he told his students, as Churchill said of political colleagues, “have much to be humble about.”
Everyone I met at MIT in those days paid this favor forward. It was a wonderful place to be a graduate student.
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics was awarded to Oliver Williamson and Elinor Ostrom today. Here is a write-up in The New York Times. I got as far as the comma before getting frustrated:
In a departure from prevailing economic theory, ...
There is no nice way to say just how badly this misconstrues the study of economics and its development as a field. Williamson's contributions are now part of the prevailing economic theory. Prior to his work, they were not. He merited the award precisely because of that change. Given the lag between when intellectual contributions are made and when they are recognized by the Nobel, his receipt of the award is not a surprise. Consider the betting pool at Harvard over the weekend, which had Williamson among the favorites.
This morning, while clearing a powdery foot of snow off my driveway, I made one of the minor* mistakes of snowblowing. I forgot to check for the newspaper, and when I pushed the snowblower over it, up through the chute went strips of newspaper. With all of the bad news this year, it was a delightfully liberating experience.
As calendar year 2008 winds down, you may be wondering what you can do to make 2009 and 2010 better than 2008. I have a small suggestion: Donate to Charlie Wheelan's campaign to fill the House seat vacated by Rahm Emanuel. Here is the beginning of the campaign e-mail:
Dear Friends, Supporters, and Spies from Other Campaigns,
We’ve been at this for about a month now, and who could have predicted the turns that the campaign would take. The sad fact is that our pathetic governor has completely changed the dynamics of this race. When I first began to tell people that I was running, they would invariably ask, “Who is ‘the Machine’ supporting?”
I thought this response by Greg Mankiw to this post by Paul Krugman was appropriate but incomplete. Appropriate, for the simple reason that Krugman is taking pot shots at those who served in the Bush Administration without any reference to evidence. Incomplete, for the equally simple reason that Mankiw has many more economists to consider in his comparisons where he does try to provide evidence.
Mankiw includes Larry Summers in his comparisons, recognizing that as Director of the NEC, he will coordinate all of the President's economic policy. Who were the directors of the NEC under President Bush?
