11
Oct
2018
The Nobel Laureates
For those of you who are pure econ geeks, here are some links:
==> As usual, check out Tyler Cowen, on Paul Romer (make sure you read the thing about Romer saying World Bank reports couldn’t use “and” more than 2.6% of the words) and William Nordhaus.
==> Also as usual, the person whose take is closest to mine is David R. Henderson in the WSJ (paywall). He also gives a shout-out to me, if that nudges you to read it.
==> If you’re a grad student or above, this post by A Fine Theorem is pretty good for explaining the development of these fields. However, do you folks agree with his description of the classical economists and their view of growth? Seems a bit off, to me.
Hi Robert – saw your link to my writeup of Romer and Nordhaus. On your final question, there is a frequent misinterpretation of Smith as being a “growth” economist – Ricardo, Marx, and especially Malthus are pretty evidently not believers in the idea that wages rise consistently in the long run. Smith is actually pretty clear in his belief in relatively constant long run wages in WoN and TMS, though. Check out the history of economic thought in, e.g., https://www.jstor.org/stable/2808089?seq=3#metadata_info_tab_contents
– Kevin