Just in case there was any doubt left after a Nobel Prize official told us last week that American literature as whole is not worthy of the Nobel Prize for literature, it is now abundantly clear that the Swedes and their co-horts intend to use the prize to reward anti-Bush liberals regardless of ability. The Nobel Prize for economics has been awarded to New York Times Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman who is also an economics professor at Princeton. His grand contribution to rigorous scholarly analysis of the world's markets large and small? As described by the International Herald Tribune: "In his model, many companies sell similar goods with slight variations. These companies get more efficient at producing their goods as they sell more, and so they grow. Consumers like variety, and pick and choose goods from among these producers in different countries, enabling countries to continue exchanging similar products. So some Americans buy Volkswagens and some Germans buy Fords.He developed this work further to explain the effect of transportation costs on why people live where they live. His model explained under what conditions trade would lead people or companies to move to a particular region or to move away."
Daniel Klein, a professor of economics at George Mason University who earlier this year wrote a comprehensive review of Krugman's body of Times columns, told the IHT: "Much of his popular work is disgraceful.He totally omits all these major issues where the economics conclusion goes against the feel-good Democratic Party ethos, which I think he's really tended to pander to especially since writing for The New York Times."
Klein
is the coauthor (with Adrian Moore and Binyam Reja) of Curb Rights: A Foundation for Free Enterprise in Urban Transit, editor of Reputation: Studies in the Voluntary Elicitation of Good Conduct, and editor of What Do Economists Contribute?
He has coauthored with Alex Tabarrok an extensive Web site on the Food and Drug Administration (FDAReview.org), and co-edited with Fred Foldvary a book The Half-Life of Policy Rationales: How New Technology Affects Old Policy Issues (New York University Press, 2003). He spends several months every year in Stockholm, where he is affiliated with the Ratio Institute as an Academic Advisor and Associate Fellow.