The Contributions of Angus Deaton

Angus Deaton was awarded the 2015 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare. This article reviews his contributions to economics. This article reviews his contributions to economics.     

Tirole's Industrial Regulation and Organization Legacy in Economics

Jean Tirole was awarded the 2014 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for his analysis of market power and regulation. This paper provides an overview of some of that work, and of his related contributions to game theory.     

Richard Thaler and the Rise of Behavioral Economics

Richard Thaler was awarded the 2017 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for his contributions to behavioral economics. In this article, I review and discuss these contributions.     

Richard H. Thaler: A Nobel Prize for Behavioural Economics

ABSTRACT

This paper provides an overview of Richard Thaler’s career and the contributions to behavioural economics that earned him the 2017 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. It focuses on his role in exposing and making sense of empirical anomalies in orthodox economics, his analysis of mental accounting, and his work with Cass Sunstein on the notion of libertarian paternalism and the ‘nudge’-based behavioural approach to economic policy. It then considers his contributions critically and explores how, unlike previous behavioural economics, Thaler succeeded in getting his new approach to behavioural economics accepted by mainstream economists.     

Angus Deaton’s Nobel Prize for Confronting Theory with Facts

Angus Deaton, recipient of the 2015 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, is broadly recognized as an outstanding applied economist who is well deserving of the prize. He has made a myriad of important contributions—alone and with renowned co-authors—across many fields. In this review of his work, I argue that it is his methodological consistency and focus on the two-way connection between empirics and theory, together with his attention to detail of how things are measured, that support his recognition by his peers. Informed by a career of doing careful econometric work using household surveys—especially on consumption, development, well-being and health—in his popular writing, Deaton chooses to focus on the importance of institutions, history and other disciplines.     

Paul Romer: Ideas,Nonrivalry, and Endogenous Growth

In 2018, Paul Romer and William Nordhaus shared the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Romer was recognized “for integrating technological innovations into long‐run macroeconomic analysis”. This article reviews his prize‐winning contributions. Romer, together with others, rejuvenated the field of economic growth. He developed the theory of endogenous technological change, in which the search for new ideas by profit‐maximizing entrepreneurs and researchers is at the heart of economic growth. Underlying this theory, he pinpointed that the nonrivalry of ideas is ultimately responsible for the rise in living standards over time.     

Agents as Empirical Macroeconomists: Thomas J. Sargent’s Contribution to Economics*

Thomas J. Sargent has fundamentally changed and, in the words of Art Rolnick, who interviewed him in 2010, “irrevocably transformed” the field of macroeconomics—whether as sole author, as co‐author with collaborators, as an author influenced by others, or as a teacher of the profession, influencing others. This paper is about his contribution to our field. The Nobel Memorial prize to Thomas J. Sargent and Christopher A. Sims has been awarded for the “empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy” or, more broadly, for macroeconometrics. One often likes to distinguish between theorists, on the one hand, and empiricists and econometricians, on the other. Thomas J. Sargent holds a unique position in between. A key theme in a large part of his work has been to put the agents in his model on equal footing with the econometrician who is observing data from the model (i.e., to assume that agents are themselves empirical macroeconomists or macroeconometricians). In this paper, I use this theme to examine his work and his contributions to the study of economics.     

Putting the "New" into New Trade Theory: Paul Krugman's Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics

This paper reviews the scientific contributions of Paul Krugman to the study of international trade, on the occasion of his receipt of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. A simplified exposition is presented of some of his principal findings, including: the effects of trade on firm scale and product diversity in a general model of monopolistic competition; the integration of monopolistic competition with factor endowments theory; the implications of transport costs, including home-market effects and the possibility of agglomeration in models of economic geography; and the positive and normative consequences of oligopolistic trade.     

A Nobel Prize for Empirical Macroeconomics: Assessing the Contributions of Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims

This paper provides an assessment of the contributions of the 2011 Nobel Prize winners, Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims. They received the prize ‘for their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy’. The paper illustrates that Sargent entertained different interpretations of rational expectations during distinct phases of his research. And it shows that Sims shifted the focus from theoretical identification restrictions to identifying the main characteristics of the time series data, a shift of focus from theory to time series.     

On the extraordinary scholarly life and times of Gordon Tullock

Gordon Tullock, who passed away at the age of 92 on November 3, 2014, ranks justly near the top of the list of the “founding fathers” of the public choice research program. Most widely known in the academy as coauthor of The Calculus of Consent (Buchanan and Tullock 1962), Professor Tullock was not named, unfairly in our joint opinion, as co-recipient of James Buchanan’s 1986 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. A good case nevertheless can be made that Gordon earned Nobel laurels on his own account for groundbreaking contributions to the literatures on, among other topics of scholarly study, rent seeking, autocracy, bureaucracy, war and revolution, law and economics and bio-economics. This essay celebrates Gordon Tullock’s major influences on the field of public choice, including his launching of Public Choice, the journal for which both of us have served as editors, and his impacts on scholars working at the many and obviously fruitful intersections of economics and political science.     

The Nobel Memorial Prize for William D. Nordhaus

William D. Nordhaus and Paul M. Romer received the 2018 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. This paper surveys Nordhaus’ contributions on “integrating climate change into long‐run macroeconomic analysis”, for which he was recognized with this Prize.     

Transaction‐Cost Economics: Past,Present, and Future?

Oliver Williamson is the founder and chief developer of transaction‐cost economics (TCE). In this brief essay, on the occasion of his Nobel Memorial Prize, I offer a partial discussion of Williamson's contributions by first summarizing some of the accomplishments of TCE‐past and then sketching some of the opportunities for TCE‐future. Most of the topics in both sections (TCE‐past and TCE‐future) start with a quotation from Williamson's early work that I think still speaks volumes today. That is, while fellow travelers and successors have acted on one set of Williamson's insights, helping to produce the accomplishments of TCE‐past, another collection of Williamson's insights has gone relatively unremarked, creating some of the opportunities for TCE‐future.     

“政治学的诺贝尔奖”与当代比较政治学的科学追求——亚当·卓沃尔斯基关于民主与发展的研究介绍

亚当·卓沃尔斯基在研究国家经济发展水平与民主转型之间的关系方面做出了杰出贡献,因而获得2010年度约翰·斯凯特政治科学奖。主要贡献表现为以下三方面：第一,就民主体制的生成问题,他的研究打破了在研究民主转型问题上的经济决定论的迷思,并验证了民主体制在生存问题上对经济发展水平的依赖性。第二,就政治体制对经济发展的影响问题,他的研究表明在大规模的跨国比较分析中,看不出不同的政治体制（民主的或非民主的）对经济发展有什么系统的影响。第三,从根本上改变了比较研究的分析思路,把比较政治学分析从过去着重于类别比较分析,提高到重视科学检验一般性理论陈述的境界,而且强调重视选择偏差机制对样本分布的影响,从而科学地分析表象后面深层的因果关系问题。     

Banerjee,Duflo, Kremer,and the Rise of Modern Development Economics*

In 2019, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. These three scholars were recognized “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”. This paper reviews the contributions of these three scholars in the field of development economics, to put this contribution in perspective. I highlight how the experimental approach helped to break down the challenges of understanding economic development into a number of component pieces, and I contrast this to understanding development using macroeconomic aggregates. I discuss pioneering contributions in understanding the challenges of education, service delivery, and credit markets in developing countries, as well as how the experimental approach has spread to virtually all aspects of development economics.     

Gordon Tullock: A Nobel Prize left unbestowed

Gordon Tullock (1922–2014) contributed substantially to public choice theory and bioeconomics. This paper discusses some of these contributions. His scientific contributions have left a Nobel Prize unbestowed.     

新民主主义经济理论的杰出实践者

本文以陈云同志在陕甘宁边区和东北解放区组织和领导经济工作为主线,阐述了陈云同志对中国革命胜利所做出的重大贡献。本文认为,陈云同志是新民主主义经济理论的杰出实践者,无论是在延安,还是在东北,陈云都为陕甘宁边区经济和东北解放区经济的发展做出了重大贡献。他不仅是我国国民经济发展和现代化建设的杰出领导人,也是我党组织和领导新民主主义经济工作最早的杰出领导人。     

Exploring Coase’s world: an introduction

The Nobel Laureate Ronald H. Coase has occupied a central place in the law and economics approach to the analysis of institutions. Many Coasean topics have been discussed and debated over almost a century. Yet, ‘deconstructing’ Professor Coase’s contributions leaves a legacy of further refining the economic meaning of property rights, the predictive role of transaction costs for institutional dynamics, and the nature of governance in the modern firm.     

Lost in translation – a revival of Wolfgang Stützel's Balances Mechanics

Wolfgang Stützel was a prominent German economist who coined a very special terminology in national accounting and in international economics. Therefore, it can be said that his contributions to economics got lost in translation. Especially, the Balances Mechanics approach and the paradox of competition are his biggest achievements in economic theory, but he never received international recognition. The objective of this paper is to pay tribute to his work by applying his analytical frameworks to the balance of payments crisis in the Eurozone and to the distributional impacts of austerity policy.     

分立的治理结构选择——2009年诺贝尔经济学奖获得者奥利弗·E·威廉姆森思想述评

威廉姆森因为对企业边界确定及治理结构方面的杰出贡献而获得2009年诺贝尔经济学奖。本文按照理论的发展脉络与逻辑关系,从交易费用或企业边界决定因素、比较组织的治理结构分析方法以及治理经济学框架三个方面,对威廉姆森在交易、契约与治理结构等方面的理论贡献进行了总结和概括。