Dear All:

Monday, October 5, 2015  marks the beginning of a series of announcements about Nobel Prizes in a variety of fields. The first announcement will be the Nobel prize in Medicine.  The Nobel prize in Economics will be announced on October 12, 2015.

Last Year’s Winner

Last year, the prize was given to Jean Tirole for“for his analysis of market power and regulation”.  Jean Tirole obtained his Ph.D. from MIT. For those curious about the early work of Jean Tirole and other Nobel prize winners from MIT, go to: http://libguides.mit.edu/c.php?g=176016&p=1159581

Who will win in 2015?

There are some fields in economics that have not received the prize in many years. It is thus possible that Economic History or Economic Development might receive the prize. 

Other topics overdue and timely are macroeconomic growth (Romer and Barro), the environment (Nordhaus and Weitzman), or public finance (Feldstein and Barro).

The Nobel Prize committee may favor candidates that are getting older (i.e. avoiding the Fischer Black debacle).   Some of those people include William Baumol, Dale Jorgenson, and Jagdish Bhagwati.

Public Opinion on the Potential Winner

1. Thompson Reuters has given up making Nobel predictions. This might have been due to the fact that their record was so poor. For 2015, they list names of economists with many citations. http://sciencewatch.com/nobel/hall-citation-laureates.  They have also introduced a “People’s Choice” poll which has Sir Richard Blundell as the choice (http://stateofinnovation.thomsonreuters.com/citation-laureates-2015-poll).
2. Economic Job Market Rumors has listed Acemoglu and Robinson, Paul Romer, Milgrom and Holmstrom, and even Christiano, Eichenbaum, and Woodford. 

I guess we’ll have to wait until next Monday.

Ludwig

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

October 3, 2015