Monday, October 08, 2007

Who will win the Nobel Prize in Economics?

It's that time of year. The Nobel Prizes in Medicine have been awarded. Time to guess who will win this years Economics award. A list of past winners can help in weeding out who won't get the award this time through.

Whether you teach economics or some other subject, I wonder whether getting students to predict the winner of some well known prize in the field, giving them some reward for a correct prediction, and thereby encouraging them to do some research on who are likely candidates, is a good way to drum up some interest in the subject. Call it the People Magazine approach to instruction.

For what it is worth, I'm predicting William Baumol, using the improbable criterion that among all economists (other than myself) I believe he is the one most frequently mentioned on this blog. (And Paul Krugman seems still too young to be a candidate.)

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