Dear All:

This week begins the annual announcement of Nobel Prizes in a variety of fields. The economics Nobel prize will be announced on October 10, 2016.

Last Year’s Winner

Last year, the prize was given to Angus Deaton for “for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare”.

Who will win in 2016?

For many years now, I have believed that guessing the winner of the Nobel Prize has become more difficult and will become even more difficult for a variety of reasons. Nevertheless, some of my readers have enjoyed the process of sending out predictions as well as allowing them to make their own predictions. Thus, I will try to set the tone.

Some of the people that one might imagine winning the Nobel Prize are getting older and thus, maybe the committee might award them the prize before they die (i.e. avoiding the Fischer Black debacle).

Some of those people include William Baumol, Dale Jorgenson, and Baghwati.

I think the topics that might entice the Nobel Committee are macroeconomic growth (Barro and Romer) or the environment (Nordhaus and Weitzman). But what about just choosing something that’s not too political? How about giving Jerry Hausman the prize for econometrics with maybe one of his students?

Public Opinion on the Potential Winner

1. Thompson Reuters list the names of economists such as Olivier Blanchard, Edward Lazear, and Mark Melitz.  Honestly, I don’t think any of those will receive the prize this year. http://stateofinnovation.thomsonreuters.com/2016-citation-laureates
2. There are betting markets open on the Literature prize and the Peace prize, but I could find nothing on economics.
3. Economics Job Rumors have predictions that are over one year old and many of the predictions are not serious. https://www.econjobrumors.com/topic/official-economics-nobel-prize-2016-predictions-thread

I guess we’ll have to wait until Monday.

Ludwig

October 5, 2016