By all accounts, the Economics Department at Harvard University is the best department in world, to the point that it gets an almost perfect score on RePEc. Yet, despite such dominance, anyone on its faculty has not received a Nobel prize in a very long time. The last Harvard faculty with a Nobel, Amartya Sen, was hired five years after his 1999 Nobel Prize. The 1998 Prize, Robert Merton, was at the Business School. You have to go all the way back to Wassily Leontief in 1973 to find the next one.
What is the department's problem? One, it could be that it is populated with brilliant people, but the the exceptional ones who merit Nobel Prizes. Two, it could be that the standing of the department in the profession is overvalued. Three, it could be that the rankings are biased in some way, say that Harvard graduates like to cite their mentors. Four, maybe there is some curse.
The 2012 prize is going to be announced tomorrow. Which Harvard Economics faculty have a shot? The most cited economist is Andrei Shleifer. But his unethical behavior makes it impossible for him to get the prize. Robert Barro is also extremely well cited, but his citations are very often about proving him wrong. Alvin Roth is a serious candidate, but just left for Stanford (because of the curse?). Martin Weitzman is a candidate, but if environmental economics gets it, it should first go to William Nordhaus alone. That leaves us, in my mind with only three viable candidates: Oliver Hart, Elhanan Helpman and Martin Feldstein. Given the long list of viable candidates (say, Tirole, Milgrom, Paul Romer, Lars Hansen, Thaler, Robert Wilson, Nordhaus, Holmstrom, Fama, Dixit, Roth, Kiyotaki, Moore, Newhouse, Grossman, Ross, Rabin, Atkinson, Deaton, Shiller, Berry), the odds remain small.
What is the department's problem? One, it could be that it is populated with brilliant people, but the the exceptional ones who merit Nobel Prizes. Two, it could be that the standing of the department in the profession is overvalued. Three, it could be that the rankings are biased in some way, say that Harvard graduates like to cite their mentors. Four, maybe there is some curse.
The 2012 prize is going to be announced tomorrow. Which Harvard Economics faculty have a shot? The most cited economist is Andrei Shleifer. But his unethical behavior makes it impossible for him to get the prize. Robert Barro is also extremely well cited, but his citations are very often about proving him wrong. Alvin Roth is a serious candidate, but just left for Stanford (because of the curse?). Martin Weitzman is a candidate, but if environmental economics gets it, it should first go to William Nordhaus alone. That leaves us, in my mind with only three viable candidates: Oliver Hart, Elhanan Helpman and Martin Feldstein. Given the long list of viable candidates (say, Tirole, Milgrom, Paul Romer, Lars Hansen, Thaler, Robert Wilson, Nordhaus, Holmstrom, Fama, Dixit, Roth, Kiyotaki, Moore, Newhouse, Grossman, Ross, Rabin, Atkinson, Deaton, Shiller, Berry), the odds remain small.
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