Les Prix Nobel

All of this years Nobel Prizes have now been officially announced.

Although I try to be multidisciplinary I honestly don't know much about the winners in Literature, Chemistry, Physics, or Medicine and have had very little time to look into it. What I have been able to uncover is that the Medicine and Chemistry prizes seem to fall under the broad field of Bio-Medical Sciences and the Physics prize is for two extremely important inventions/discoveries for the information technology revolution. These are two of the most important current areas of scientific research, so that seems to make sense. The prize in Literature was given to a German-Romanian poet who criticized Nicolae Ceausescu's Communist government. She receives a thumbs up from me.

I have addressed the ridiculousness of Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize in other places and after talking to other people (most of whom have had agreed with me) I have cooled down considerably. To be honest, he has handled it quite well and the conservatives who think he should turn down the prize are out of their minds. That wouldn't help anyone.

More importantly, the Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel. Technically it is not a Nobel Prize because it wasn't in Nobel's will but that isn't really his fault and times change.

Oliver Williamson was not, contrary to what many people believe (see Felix Salmon for example; by the way he's totally wrong about Fama) a crazy long shot. Of course it's impossible to know who would win with so many candidates and I wouldn't have bet on him but it's obvious that many people gave him a fair shot to win it considering his contribution, citations, age, and the present economic and political climate. He did a lot of seminal work on the "boundaries of the firm" and developed the "transaction cost" theory of the firm following on the work of Coase. This is a really interesting area and one in which I'd like to do research if I end up going to graduate school in Economics.

The interesting part of it all is Elinor Ostrom. It's made even more interesting by the fact that she is associated with ASU, not with the Economics department but rather with the School of Human Evolution and Social Change (a school that includes majors in Anthropology, Applied Mathematics, and Global Health).

My theory is that sharing prizes is in vogue nowadays because so many people "deserve the prize". The selection of Ostrom reflects the Scandinavian liberal bias that wanted both a woman and someone who is "not an economist" in these times of distrust towards mainstream economists. This is the same bias that was the reason Obama was selected against proper judgement and it is basically a political statement.

Regardless I think she is a respectable scholar in an under appreciated field (based on what little I know about her). Basically she is a political scientist by training and is part of the Bloomington (Indiana University) School of Public Choice in political economy. This is contrasted with the Rochester School of Public Choice and Virginia-style political economy that are the other two key places for this kind of research. It seems that much of her research has focused on Institutional Analysis and non-market solutions to the Tragedy of the Commons.

She also appears to be libertarian-leaning with her research and her personal views given this strong vote of confidence from Pete Boetke, an ardent libertarian and Austrian Economist. This is good and probably not what the Swedes were expecting. The same goes for Williamson. While they don't necessarily fit into the mainstream of economic thought, they aren't socialists either. They recognize that while markets don't always work best, governments certainly don't either. More on this later. Here is some links:

Press Conference (this is pretty good; some highlights: "as an undergraduate, I took almost as much economics as political science", "forgive me for saying so but a lot of people are looking at you and are just thinking, 'boy you look like a sweet little grandma'")

Information for the Public - basic analysis of their work and why they were awarded the prize

Scientific Background - More advanced; compiled by the committee that selects the winners

First Real Post

I smell another Defenestration of Prague coming. This time it seems like the Germans are going to throw Vaclav Klaus out of a window for refusing to sign the Lisbon Treaty. Klaus is clearly in the right and should be lauded for his firm stance against this treaty which seeks to force the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union on all member states. This is dangerous and a bad idea. Hopefully, he stands his ground.

Obligatory First Post

So I have decided to start blogging. I probably won't be able to update it too often but we'll see. It is likely that no one will read this but many people have told me it's worthwhile to write down your thoughts so I'm gonna go ahead and do it anyway.

For starters, the title is a reference to one of the great movie titles of all time. Apparently linking is all the rage in blogging so I'm going to follow suit and do that a lot. At least as often I can without annoying myself and losing focus. Also, I think one of the major benefits of blogs is that they create these networks of links that help the general reading public decide what websites are worth going to. There is a mass of information available on the web and blogs help to provide trustworthy guides along the way.

On writing style, I really like to write in a form of stream of consciousness and then edit out things that would make me look really stupid if lots of people saw them (as I said most likely no one will read this but you can't be too cautious).

The subtitle gives two super broad areas that I will try to write about. Basically what it means is that I will primarily be writing about my thoughts on economics (my broad definition of economics is "the study of markets") but occasionally other things that I find interesting or profound.

Finally, if the stuff I write here gets political (as it most likely will), I should clarify from the outset what my political views (as they stand today) are. I consider myself a pragmatic libertarian or classical liberal. Although I have some socially conservative views, I try to keep them to myself as much as possible. In eight grade I supported George W. Bush for president. I went to a public school in a fairly conservative area and had a few conservative friends. I didn't know what I was talking about to put it mildly. After that I moved to the left and more or less hated Bush and all Republicans because they are evil and stupid people (I currently believe in a significantly tempered version of this; I dislike many Republicans even if I mostly agree with them). When I first heard about Barack Obama around the beginning of my senior year, I vigorously supported him. As time went on I moved towards the right on economic issues and towards my current position. Today I support whoever I think is most likely to deliver the end that I believe is most beneficial (usually by mistake; most often noone fits this criterion) and do not vote because it is irrational.

I use parentheses too much. Sorry.