The Friday File: Flavanols in cocoa slow and even reverse age-related cognitive decline. Better yet, a nations’ annual per-capita chocolate consumption is correlated with the number of Nobel laureates. The country with the most Nobels per-capita and the greatest per-capita chocolate consumption: Switzerland, followed by Sweden and Denmark. The U.S. was in the middle. To win one more Nobel, a nation must increase its per-capita chocolate consumption by 0.9 pound/year.
Tag Archives: Nobel Prize
Death of a Giant
James McGill Buchannan, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in economics, died earlier this week. He was best known for promoting public choice theory, an approach which treats politicians and bureaucrats as utility-maximizing economic agents motivated by self-interest. Rather than making more money, bureaucrats and politicians aim to win reelection, gain more power, more budget authority and prestige but most importantly, put their personal interests ahead of the public interest.
Good Bye Elinor
Elinor Ostrom, the only female economist to win the Nobel Prize, died earlier this week. Her area of focus was on how best to share common resources, like fisheries, water, air, forests, and grazing lands. Her conclusion; communities with common interests can solve problems better than regulators seeking simple panaceas. The key, get the parties to understand their common interests and then let them figure out the solution.
Nobel Prize Prognostications
With the Nobel in economics to be awarded next week, here’s my list of candidates: Bhagwati and Dixit for research in international trade, Barro and Romer for growth econ, Hart for transactional econ, Nordhaus and Weitzman for environmental econ, Fama and French for financial econ, Shiller and Thaler for behavioral econ, Diamond for financial intermediation, Hausman and White for econometrics and Krueger and Tullock for rent-seeking behavior.
Stupid Senator Shelby
In April ’10 Obama nominated MIT economist Peter Diamond, to be a Fed governor. Sen Shelby questioned his experience. Moreover, he got all the R’s on the Sen Banking Comm. to vote against confirmation. In Oct ’10 Diamond won the Nobel Prize in economics! In Jan ’11 Obama rightly renominated him yet Shelby prevailed and 2 days ago Diamond withdrew his nomination. I am fuming mad.