Monday, October 13, 2008

Krugman the Nobelist

According to Krugman, something funny happened to him this morning. And that is that he got the Nobel. As usual, Tyler Cowen is quick to give everything you want to know about the latest econ Nobel laureate. So there's probably no need to say anything else.

I just want to reflect how I got to know Krugman's line of works...

I learned about Krugman first from classes taught by Faisal Basri (international trade) and Mari Pangestu (intermediate trade theory). I then wrote my assignment essay on Krugman's model of increasing returns to scale, of which I publish one paper in a student economic journal. Along the way, when I was his TA, Sjahrir gave me a couple of books written by Krugman. Then I noticed Krugman became NY Times columnist and wrote not only economic op-ed but also political analysis ... the latter many times confuses me... As Frankel (or was it Rogoff) said to him in one of those debates, Krugman is a top notch economist but when it comes to political analysis, "you're just less impressive"... My error: this last story is of Stiglitz. Apologies to Krugman.

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