Baltic Business Research

Summary
It is, as usual, hard to predict the next winner of the Nobel Prize in economics. There are around 200-300 serious candidates. The method should be to identify certain research areas that are – or should be – on the “waiting list” and then to find some outstanding pioneers in these fields. The guess has to be done in this order. In the past three years, I got all names right by using this method. Betting odds usually do not serve as an appropriate guideline.

Areas that could be interesting this year are particularly growth theory from both the microeconomic and the macroeconomic angle, business cycle research and private consumption – but also theory of firms, theory of incentives, and still some parts of finance and – as always – certain important macro- and microeconomic methodological and econometrical breakthroughs. I would not rule out economic research topics with interdisciplinary links to psychology, politics, law and regulations, the environment and health – despite the recognition of sociology two years ago.

Most of text of this article is in Swedish – but foreign readers can watch headlines in English above the three specific tables with my own favorite candidates (at the end of this paper). Most candidates come again from the U.S. From there, Paul Romer, Robert Barro, Elhanan Helpman, Gene Grossman, Christopher Sims, Jerry Hausman, Lars Peter Hansen, Kevin Murphy, Robert Hall, Oliver Hart and Robert Shiller are my own favorite candidates. If the award goes to Europe, the French economist Jean Tirole (Toulouse) should be the most probable candidate and Alberto Alesina and Richard Blundell his main European challengers. From Asia, I consider Avinash Dixit as the main candidate and still Jagdish Bhagwati as his main Asian challenger.

Totally, I present three lists of personally  favored candidates: a very narrow one (page 6, 10 candidates), a relatively narrow one (page 6, around 20 candidates)  and a broader one (page 8, around 40 candidates). 10 thinkable joint combinations of names and areas are taken up as a new approach – but analysts of my tables should concentrate more on the three other lists. We will have to see whether the next Nobel Prize winner(s) more belongs (belong) to the group of economists with scientific breakthroughs or to the group of researchers that are linked to more current topics like Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart. The first group has been dominating so far – and will most probably continue to do so.

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