Climate, development tipped for Nobel economics prize

The 2018 Nobel season, marked by the lack of a literature award for the first time in 70 years, winds up Monday with the economics prize which experts say could go to research on the climate or development.

The Nobel economics prize was created by the Swedish central bank “in memory ofAlfred Nobel” and first awarded in 1969, unlike the other prizes which were created in his last will and testament and first awarded in 1901.

As with the other Nobels, nominations and deliberations are kept secret for 50 years, so it’s nearly impossible to know which way the prize committee is leaning each year.

“From a historical perspective, there are about as many conservative as liberal economists in recent years and the trend has been for diversification: the range of fields of research that have been honored has been more vast, the choice of laureates has been more eclectic,” economist Gabriel Soderberg of Sweden’s Uppsala University told AFP.

Last year the prize went to US economist Richard Thaler, a co-founder of the so-called “nudge” theory, which demonstrates how people can be persuaded to make decisions that leave them healthier and happier.

“The heart of the Nobel prizes are the awards for science, peace and literature. The economics prize is not formally a Nobel prize,” Soderberg said.

That fact may make “the jury more attentive to public opinion, a little more sensitive to the way in which the laureate will be received,” he said.

This is why “societal questions are reflected in the prize. The issue of climate change is very important right now and (for this reason) William Nordhaus could be honored,” he said.

Nordhaus, a Yale University professor known for his research on the economic consequences of global warming, bears two of the typical characteristics of a Nobel economics laureate: he’s a man, and he’s American, like 70 percent of previous prizewinners.

At 77, he’s a decade older than the average winner.

A WOMAN’S YEAR?

Only one woman has won the economics prize since 1969, Elinor Ostrom in 2009.

Micael Dahlen, a professor at the Stockholm School of Economics, said that was all the more reason to give the nod to a woman this year.

“I’d really like to see the prize go to (France’s) Esther Duflo, whose research has focused on developing economies and gender equality, or Cuban-born American Carmen Reinhart, active in the field of public finance,” Dahlen explained.

Meanwhile, Hubert Fromlet, a professor at Sweden’s University of Vaxjo singled out several American women who could be honored: Anne Krueger, the first woman named the deputy head of the International Monetary Fund, Susan Athey, known for her work on auctions and decision making under uncertainty, and Claudia Goldin, who researches gender inequality.

“I could also see the prize going to a macro-economist like Ben Bernanke,” the former head of the US Federal Reserve, said Dahlen.

Among the “usual suspects” cited frequently for the Nobel are US economists Paul Romer and Paul Milgrom, and Frenchman Olivier Blanchard, a former IMF chief economist.