Paul Krugman, the Princeton University scholar and New York Times columnist, won the Nobel economic prize Monday for his analysis of how economies of scale can affect trade patterns and the location of economic activity.
The 55-year-old American economist was the lone winner of the 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) award and the latest in a string of American researchers to be honored. It was only the second time since 2000 that a single laureate won the prize, which is typically shared by two or three researchers…
Besides his work as an economist at Princeton University in New Jersey, where he has been since 2000, Krugman also writes about politics and inequality in the U.S. and other topics for The New York Times. He has also written for Foreign Affairs, the Harvard Business Review and Scientific American.
He has come out forcefully against John McCain during the economic meltdown, saying the Republican candidate is “more frightening now than he was a few weeks ago” and earlier that the GOP has become “the party of stupid.”
I wonder if he means “stupid” as an individual like McCain or Bush? Or does he mean an agglomeration, say, of the eedjit vote?
#28 – O’Furniture
>>So, has this guys “theory” resulted in any
>>betterment of anything for anyone?
O, Paddy O’Furniture. Don’t let the sour grapes get the best of you.
I can only imagine the stinging humiliation you must feel every time it becomes evident that all the smart people are libs. You’re going to have to deal with it because it’s not going to change.
And since you don’t seem to know anything about economic theories, here’s a freebie for you: They’re not like inventing the wheel, or fire. They have a subtle, yet profound effect on how individuals, businesses, and countries conduct trade (in the case of Krugman). Sorry if you don’t get as much enjoyment out of that as from Rubik’s cube, but hey. You’re never going to win a Nobel Prize either.
c’mon paddy, you’ve read up Krugman, please elucidate us all on why the paper he won for is incorrect, flawed, or just plain wrong.
and no, being “liberal” does not count.
here, i’ll give you some help:
Krugman’s theory supports global fair trade and opposes the protectionist ideology supported by John McCain….
oh wait.
#33 I really don’t care about someones political affiliation in these matters.
So, what subtle, yet profound effect on how individuals, businesses, and countries conduct trade are a result of this guys work?
Paul Krugman’s work on economics was good. Then he went to the Times and decided to focus on politics, and became a hack. It’s even been measured that he’s a left-wing version of Ann Coulter in terms of partisanship.
Just one example, when Clinton was President and proposing Social Security reform, he would write articles about how SS is in fact in crisis and it is irresposible to say otherwise. Then Bush becomes President, and it is suddenly ridiculous to suggest there’s a crisis.
So does he support Bush’s policies on free trade or oppose them? His work suggest he is very much a free trader, but you know that’s Republican territory and all…
#35 – O’Furniture
>>I really don’t care about someones political
>>affiliation in these matters.
HAW! Are you practicing your comedy routine for a late night talk show appearance? Perhaps you’ll share the billing with McCain on Letterman?
You ALWAYS care about someone’s political affiliation. How else would you know whether to agree or disagree with them?
LMAO. When are you people going to realize the world and the people in it are not Left and Right, Liberal and Conservative, Democrate and Republican?! And how any true “conservative” could defend the Bush administration or McCain is beyond me. Have some principals beyond “Must support my party”.
As for the guy’s theories, from what I’ve read, they’re sound conclusions for the economic system we have. Particularly when you look into the details of what “Free Trade” really is; government sponsored monopolies.
So Mustard, I take it you support free trade then, since this well learned economist feels that way?
Well placed praise! Everyone should read Krugman. One of the smartest minds out there.
Check out his article on our real-estate debacle *three* years ago:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/29/opinion/29krugman.html
#49 – Lyin’ Mike
>>So Mustard, I take it you support free trade
>>then, since this well learned economist
>>feels that way?
He does?
“And by awarding Krugman, a critic of unfettered free-market policies who has focused heavily on globalisation and the developing world, the jury has indeed decided to confront major, civilisation-changing issues.
In his New York Times columns, Krugman has stood out as a harsh critic of the Bush administration’s free-market policies.“
Before anyone gets TOO excited, the Nobel Prize for Economics is just using the NOBEL name for prestige. It’s a bank award named IN MEMORY of Alfred Nobel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_prize_economics
It’s no way near in terms of prestige to the Nobel Peace Prize.
#43 – Named
Pfffft. The committee is the same, the money’s the same, the presentation of the prize is the same, it’s a “Nobel” prize, even if Big Al didn’t set it up in 1895.
They didn’t even HAVE a field of study called “economics” in 1895; its predecessor (“political economy”) wasn’t developed until the late 18th centruy.
#38 “HAW!”
As I thought. You don’t have a clue about this guy or his work.
It’s faster to just say so.
#45 – O’Pinocchio
>>As I thought. You don’t have a clue about
>>this guy or his work
I believe I do, son. You, on the other hand, would have no way to know about him unless you are an economist (HAW HAW!), you read that mouthpiece of communism, the NYT, or you’ve read his books (HAW HAW!!)
#46 “I believe I do, son.”
Cool. So, why can’t you answer a simple question about it?
44,
Economics existed in 1895. It wasn’t a SCIENCE as there is no science of economics. Economics is akin to weather forecasting. Sure, you can get it right 48% of the time, but when you’re wrong, you lose your house.
#48 – Named
>>It wasn’t a SCIENCE as there is no science
>>of economics.
It’s a SOCIAL science. Perhaps you’ve heard the term. And whether you want to admit it or not, Krugman won the Nobel Prize in it. Who cares if it’s a “science” or not, anyway. Literature isn’t a science. “Peace” isn’t a science.
The term “economics” did not exist in 1895 with the meaning it attained during the 20th century.
$47 – O’Pinocchio
>>Cool. So, why can’t you answer a simple
>>question about it?
A question about what, O’P?
I think you ought to put on your velour smoking jacket and fire up a doobie. You just keep digging yourself in deeper and deeper.
#50 “A question about what, O’P?”
The one you’ve been dodging due to lack of knowledge.
#51 – O’Furniture
>>The one you’ve been dodging due to lack
>>of knowledge.
I can only surmise that you have ALREADY donned the velour smoking jacket and fired up a doobie. You’re not making any sense (not that you usually do).
WHAT IS THE QUESTION?
#52
From my 1st post on this thread.
Has this guys theory been put to practical and beneficial use?
If you know, I’d really be interested. Especially with what is happening in the world right now.
Shows what you understand.
Here he is from in the middle of Clinton’s presidency, with no intervening politics.
Unfortunately, there is so much logic and evidence behind the case for free trade that many smart people are willing to make that case for nothing; they spoil the market for anyone who might want to make money at it. And anyway, there isn’t that much of a market. The benefits of free trade, though substantial, are thinly spread, so it isn’t in the interest of any individual to spend a lot of money promoting that cause. Protectionism, by contrast, tends to impose widely spread costs but to confer benefits on concentrated interest groups, who therefore have a strong incentive to lobby for it–and to provide financial support for those who help make it seem intellectually respectable.
So NOBEL PRIZE winner Paul Krugman considers opposition to free trade to be not intellectually respectable.
#53 – O’Furniture
>>Has this guys theory been put to practical
>>and beneficial use?
Ah, well that I DON’T know. I wasn’t aware that short-term “practical” benefit was a precondition for receiving the Nobel Prize.
What practical benefit has derived from the work of Yoichiro Nambu (“for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics”) or Martin Chalfie (“for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP”) or Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio (“author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer”).
Any of that stuff come in handy around the house lately?
You just dislike Krugman because he’s smart and he’s liberal (kind of a tautology, but there you have it).
#55 “Ah, well that I DON’T know. I wasn’t aware that short-term “practical” benefit was a precondition for receiving the Nobel Prize.”
My interest in his theory doesn’t encompass the Nobel Prize. Well, maybe his work is or isn’t worth something to people in the world.
I was just curious.
49,
I’ve heard of social science… it was the class I slept through in high-school.
The PEACE prize isn’t the prize for PEACE science, since peace isn’t a science but a theoretical possibility. The quest for peace is quantifiable though, since PEACE has some measurable qualities.
The Nobel Prize for economics is a total construct in every sense of the word. Economics is a “technical” science in that there are variables and quantities and measures, but NONE of them operate outside of the structure of absolutes. In economics, you can measure Main Street performance, but once you apply it to the real world, you find all kinds of mushiness gets in the way… things like people and life.
When you measure SCIENTIFIC pursuits, like physics and chemistry, everything is absolute. Feelings don’t get in the way.
If you want to see Economic science at its best, do a little study on Friedman and the CHicago boys in Argentina, Chile, Moscow, Warsaw and other IMF sponsored nations. You’ll find that the “science” of economics was only applicable when the military dictatorships were put into place first.
Just because someone stuck “science” in front of a word doesn’t make it science. Unless you believe in the science of phrenology as well…
#57 – Named
Hey, I never said economics was a science. The Nobel Prize committee never said economics was a science. I said it’s classified as a “social science”, but I didn’t take a stance (wide or otherwise) for or against that classification. I’m sure that, at some level, it’s hocus pocus dominocus, just like psychology, stock picking, literature, and even medicine. Maybe the Nobel Prize is generally useless, and doesn’t reflect anything of value about the winner.
HOWEVER, I haven’t seen the right wingnuts frothing at the mouth over any of the economics Nobel laureates listed below; most people probably never even HEARD of these guys (except the alert ones, who recognize John Nash).
You get a high-profile lib winning the prize, and keyboards and monitor screens worldwide are flecked with the spittle of a million outraged neocons.
2007 – Leonid Hurwicz, Eric S. Maskin
2006 – Edmund S. Phelps
2005 – Robert J. Aumann, Thomas C. Schelling
2004 – Finn E. Kydland, Edward C. Prescott
2003 – Robert F. Engle III, Clive W.J. Granger
2002 – Daniel Kahneman, Vernon L. Smith
2001 – George A. Akerlof, A. Michael Spence,
2000 – James J. Heckman, Daniel L. McFadden
1999 – Robert A. Mundell
1998 – Amartya Sen
1997 – Robert C. Merton, Myron S. Scholes
1996 – James A. Mirrlees, William Vickrey
1995 – Robert E. Lucas Jr.
1994 – John C. Harsanyi, John F. Nash Jr
1993 – Robert W. Fogel, Douglass C. North
1992 – Gary S. Becker
1991 – Ronald H. Coase
1990 – Harry M. Markowitz, Merton H. Miller 1989 – Trygve Haavelmo
1988 – Maurice Allais
1987 – Robert M. Solow
1986 – James M. Buchanan Jr.
1985 – Franco Modigliani
1984 – Richard Stone
1983 – Gerard Debreu
1982 – George J. Stigler
1981 – James Tobin
1980 – Lawrence R. Klein
1979 – Theodore W. Schultz, Sir Arthur Lewis
1978 – Herbert A. Simon
1977 – Bertil Ohlin, James E. Meade
1976 – Milton Friedman
1975 – Leonid Vitaliyevich Kantorovich,
1974 – Gunnar Myrdal, Friedrich August von Hayek
1973 – Wassily Leontief
1972 – John R. Hicks, Kenneth J. Arrow
1971 – Simon Kuznets
1970 – Paul A. Samuelson
1969 – Ragnar Frisch, Jan Tinbergen
58,
When Milton Friedman died I was hoping for a total wash of his theories and implementations. Instead, we got lamentations about how great he was. As I mentioned before, ask Chileans, Argentinians, Russians and Polish citizens what they think of him, and you’ll find he ranks up there with Stalin and Hitler. And maybe even GW Bush.
As an aside, the right-wing has always been pandering cowards. When they perceive that their team is “losing” they go all frothy and come out in droves. To understand the right wing, especially in ‘Merica, you only need to look to third world nations when tribal disputes get out of hand and result in wholesale violence when group A disagrees with______ with group B. The right-wing is about as intellectual as a grain of rice… And that’s disparaging the rice!
#59 – Named
>>As I mentioned before, ask Chileans,
>>Argentinians, Russians and Polish citizens
>>what they think of him, and you’ll find he
>>ranks up there with Stalin and Hitler.
Well, I don’t know. I find conspiracy claims that Friedman was complicit in military coups in Chile and Argentina, and monkey business in Russia and Poland (never heard about those last two) to be a little on the tinfoil-hat side.
However, if you don’t like Uncle Miltie, you should like Krugman, as he’s criticized Friedman, e.g., :
“In the aftermath of the Great Depression, there were many people saying that markets can never work. Friedman had the intellectual courage to say that markets can too work, and his showman’s flair combined with his ability to marshal evidence made him the best spokesman for the virtues of free markets since Adam Smith. But he slipped all too easily into claiming both that markets always work and that only markets work. It’s extremely hard to find cases in which Friedman acknowledged the possibility that markets could go wrong, or that government intervention could serve a useful purpose“.
Just as I suspected: No one was able to answer my simple question, proving that liberals are unintelligent, dishonest and uneducated.
Liberals fail at life, and I win another thread. Game over.
#26…your lack of knowledge and education is showing…firstly, Edison’s best friend was Ford – a known fascist. Edison resorted to lying and tried to destroy Tesla.
Secondly, when all of you can stand up and say, “Yes, I was educated in economics by a professor who was an adviser to the U.N,” then you can stay in the room and I’ll talk to you.
Unless you can’t, then I’m not interested in teaching pigs how to sing, either.