Dear All:

The 2013 Nobel prize for economic sciences will be announced on Monday, October 13, 2013.

Last Year’s Winner

Last year, the prize was given to Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design.

Who will win in 2013?

To be honest, I have no clue. My past pre- and post- analyses can be found at: (https://ludwigbc.com/blog/readers-and-thinkers/).

Before telling you who I think will win, I will tell you who others think will win.

1.  Harvard Betting Pool.  Unfortunately this was closed down due to the Lord High Executioner at Harvard, so no predictions from this anymore.  Although historically, it didn’t predict very well anyway.

2.  Thompson Reuters makes many predictions based on citations and so its usefulness is suspect.  Joshua D. Angrist, David Card, and Alan Krueger for empirical microeconomics.  Sir Hendry and Peter Phillips for contributions to economic time series.  Sam Peltzman and Richard Posner for theories of regulation.

3.  Economic Job Market Rumors is where many graduate students post their thoughts.  Unfortunately, most graduate students have no idea of who will win the Nobel prize and so their predictions are relatively useless. For example,  one suggestion is Chavez and Castro for helping alleviate poverty.  Another suggestion is the politician, Ron Paul.  Some people are even suggesting Lucas and Sargent, even though they have already won the Nobel prize.  Still others suggest Duflo and Banerjee for development.

Some other candidates mentioned on this site are Paul Romer, Robert Barro, Angus Deaton, and even Robert Shiller and Richard Thaler.

4.  My Thoughts.  I think that the most topical areas are growth, international macroeconomics, and public finance.  The fields that have waited the most years since their last Nobel award are development, finance, and international economics.  The Nobel candidates that are oldest are in the fields of finance and industrial organization.  Although typically not relevant, the composition of the Nobel committee has changed with 3 members leaving and 3 new ones coming in.  This has led to a decrease in the committee concentration in the area of econometrics and statistics.

My thoughts on the winners in order of likelihood.

1. Paul Romer and Robert Barro [Growth]

2. Baumol & Jorgenson [Contestability and Productivity]

3. Hausman & Dickey & Fuller [Econometrics]  (I would have added Hal White, but he died on March 31, 2012.)

Enjoy!

Ludwig

p.s.  please feel free to make your comments and predictions on this page.

October 6, 2013