Friday, October 9, 2009

Odds a Princetonian wins the Economics Nobel: Bad


After this morning's announcement that President Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, Princetonians are 0-for-5 this year when it comes to Nobel Prizes. Now we're down to one: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences, which is more commonly known as the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Last year, the economics Nobel went to Professor Paul Krugman. This year's winner will be announced early Monday morning, but the odds of Princeton winning the prize in back-to-back years do not look promising. A quick glance at the list maintained by British gambling cmpany Ladbrokes show the four frontrunners to be: University of Chicago professor Eugene Fama (2-1 odds), Stanford professor Paul Romer (4-1), Austrian economist Ernst Fehr (6-1) and Dartmouth professor Kenneth French (6-1).

The three top candidates associated with Old Nassau are way back in the pack: Professor Avinash Dixit (14-1), professor emeritus William Baumol (16-1), and Gene Grossman (20-1), Professor of Economics and International Affairs and the Acting Chair of the Department of Economics.


Looks like there's no need to wake up at 6 a.m. for this announcement.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The award will go to Obama, for the innovative and inspirational theory that we increase wealth by borrowing money to purchase productive assets that we then destroy (aka "cash for clunkers".)

Anonymous said...

But that's just their own fault for SAVING their productive assets (wealth). SAVING is bad because the goal of any economy is not to create as much wealth (SAVINGS) as possible, it's to create as much "work" as possible (LOL).

PhD Economics said...

Has anyone seen odds for the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics? Is Fama still a "favorite" as he was in 2009?