13 October 2008

Nobel Prize to Paul Krugman

The Nobel Prize committee named Paul Kragman as the winner of the Nobel Prize in economics "for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity." He is a professor at Princeton, I learned, but he also writes for the New York Times, and he's one of the people who has been giving advice about the current financial crisis and he makes a lot of sense, even before he won the prize. His ideas about injecting government capital into banks seems to be an idea that is catching on. Maybe more people will listen to him about this now that he's more famous.

So what did he do to be recognized by the Nobel committee? His field is in the area of economics called strategic trade theory which "argues that countries can subsidize certain industries to gain global market share. Others have praised his work on the development of clusters of related industries and his equations that measure how economic shocks affect the current account, exchange rates and capital flows." (from bloggingstocks.com)

It did seem a bit ironic to me that the prize for economics was announced in the middle of all this financial trouble. What do you suppose he's going to do with his prize money?

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