Krugman’s Nobel

by on October 13, 2008 · 2 comments

Like a lot of people, I was surprised by the choice of Paul Krugman for the Nobel Prize in economics, but upon further reflections I agree with Tyler Cowen and Will Wilkinson that the award is well-deserved even if the timing is unfortunate. Krugman’s now-decade-old column in defense of free trade is my all-time favorite Krugman writing and among my favorite examples of popular writing on economics by any author. Recently Krugman’s columns have gotten a little too partisan and strident for my taste, but contra my esteemed co-blogger, Krugman is indisputably a first-rate economist who has done important theoretical work. There’s just no comparison to generic left-wing pundits.

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Tim Lee / Timothy B. Lee (Contributor, 2004-2009) is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He is currently a PhD student and a member of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. He contributes regularly to a variety of online publications, including Ars Technica, Techdirt, Cato @ Liberty, and The Angry Blog. He has been a Mac bigot since 1984, a Unix, vi, and Perl bigot since 1998, and a sworn enemy of HTML-formatted email for as long as certain companies have thought that was a good idea. You can reach him by email at leex1008@umn.edu.

  • http://techliberation.com/author/berinszoka/ Berin Szoka

    As the esteemed co-blogger in question, I don't disagree. My initial twitter-response was based on the fact that Krugman is a basically unreconstructed Keynesian. But I suppose we have to take the good with the bad.

    I only fear that the halo effect of Krugman's Nobel does not distract from the bankruptcy of his ideas beyond the issue of free trade.

  • http://techliberation.com/author/berinszoka/ Berin Szoka

    As the esteemed co-blogger in question, I don't disagree. My initial twitter-response was based on the fact that Krugman is a basically unreconstructed Keynesian. But I suppose we have to take the good with the bad.

    I only fear that the halo effect of Krugman's Nobel does not distract from the bankruptcy of his ideas beyond the issue of free trade.

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