Nobel Prize in Economics Announced Tomorrow

Here's a shortlist of potential winners. Like I wrote before, I'm rooting for Gordon Tullock.

Predicting the winner (or winners) of the Nobel Prize in economics is notoriously difficult — even Ph.D economists usually get it wrong.

Here’s the economic equivalent of the Daily Racing Form:

The Academics: Much like hyperlinking boosts Google results, getting a paper cited in someone else’s boosts academic visibility and is sometimes seen as a fast-track to Stockholm. Thomson Scientific makes Nobel predictions each year based on the most-cited economists — this year, the short list includes Jean “Game Theory” Tirole (for industrial organization and regulation); Robert Wilson and Paul Milgrom (for the mechanism of auctions); and Elhanan Helpmen and Gene Grossman (for international trade and economic growth).

The Phil Mickelsons: Basically, these guys could win because they haven’t yet. Greg Mankiw writes on his blog that the most-cited nonwinners include Eugene “Random Walk” Fama, Robert Barro, Andrei Shleifer and Martin “Almost the next Greenspan” Feldstein.

The Al Gore-People’s Choice Award: If the choice was left to President Bush’s critics, Paul Krugman would probably get the majority vote. He’s a candidate not for his Bush-bashing commentary, but for his earlier work in international economics.

Write-In for the Maestro: Tyler Cowen would give it to Anne Krueger, Jagdish Bhagwati and Gordon Tullock for rent-seeking. One of his commenters asks, “why not give it to Greenspan?”

The winner will be announced Monday, Oct. 15 — the last of the Nobel Prize announcements. The award is formally called the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. It was not one of the five original prizes Alfred Nobel outlined in his will, which were first awarded in 1901 for physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace. It was added in 1968 to commemorate the Swedish central bank’s 300th anniversary, and the Nobel Foundation has since barred any new prizes (read more about the economics prize controversy here and here). –Kelly Evans

See a list of past winners.