Professor Paul Krugman (1955- ) (tight) with his wife Robin Wells, also a professor at Princeton
Amidst the economic turmoil in the United States and in the rest of the world, an American professor was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences this week. The Nobel committee awarded Paul Krugman, an economics professor at Princeton University, the prize for his efforts that help explain why some countries dominate international trade. The Nobel Prize committee cited Mr Krugman for his “analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity”. But, the Princeton University professor is probably better known for his Op-Ed columns in the New York Times in which he consistently criticised President Bush’s administration and its economic policies. It is too bad that his advice to the administration and his wider economic theories went unheeded in America. The prize, however, was awarded for the academic, and less political, research that he conducted primarily before he began writing regularly for the Times. Mr Krugman won the prize for his research, beginning in 1979, that explained patterns of trade among countries, as well as what goods are produced where and why. He set out to explain why worldwide trade was dominated by a few countries that were similar to one another, and why a country might import the same kinds of goods it exported.
In an interview with Reuters, Mr Krugman denied that he felt vindicated by the Nobel Prize because it was given for his professional work as an economist rather than for his commentary in which he was an outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s economic policies. “I feel vindicated by the fact that when I criticised Bush, 80 percent of the public approved of him, and, now, it’s more like 80 percent of the public disapproves. That’s the vindication”, he said in his interview with Reuters in Princeton NJ this week. He also predicted that the world is likely heading for a deep recession despite the European-led plan to bail out banks hit by the credit crunch. He said, “There’s a tremendous amount of downward momentum built into the real economy from this crisis. Even if we unlock the credit markets, we probably still have a nasty recession ahead of us”. God willing, Mr Krugman’s dire prediction can be averted and he will not collect another prize for it any time soon.
14 October 2008
Yuri Reshetnikov
Voice of Russia World Service
http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=33748&cid=87&p=14.10.2008 (in English)
