Saturday, October 8, 2011

The next Nobel Prize

Monday, the next "Nobel Prize" in Economics will be announced and everybody is playing a game of predictions, so why not me? I have a wish that happens to coincide with my prediction: William Nordhaus.

Why? Because environmental economics has been long rumored to get it and it deserves to be recognized. Within that field, Nordhaus has made major contributions that brought this field to the mainstream. And he is a genuinely good guy, always helpful and willing to listen to you or help you out. Also, the signals I have been receiving from members of the Prize committee is that they really like his work.

I am afraid, though, that he may have to share his work with Martin Weitzman. Who has made the more seminal contributions to the field can be discussed, but Weitzman is all the opposite in terms of attitude. In addition, I do not like his way of trying to make a name of himself, like I showed previously. He has also been caught and punished for stealing horse manure, so his ethical standards are definitively not up to par.

2 comments:

mOOm said...

I don't think either of them deserve a prize for environmental economics. Weitzman made greater contributions if anything. There's Mäler and Dasgupta for example and plenty of others... I'll be outraged if Nordhaus got it. The DICE model is totally crap.

Kehoe said...

Are you saying this because Per Krusell works on environmental economics?