Baltic Business Research

Prize in Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2019 – my favorite female candidates

It is hard to predict the winner(s) of the Nobel Prize in Economics (formally:”The Riksbank’s Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”). There are around 200-300 serious candidates. In the past 16 years, I predicted 22 out of totally 35 winners, mainly by checking out the research areas which primarily deserved the award and then by trying to find the most outstanding researchers in those areas.

Like in 2018, I do not mainly focus on the most probable forecasts for the leading candidates but concentrate this year again on summing up a number of female economists who would deserve the award by now – and there are certainly more names outside my list. I conclude that there should be room for more courageous prize decisions – both when it comes to gender, ethnical and geographical background. For years, I have been complaining about the underrepresentation of female prize winners; despite my encouraging conclusions I am very much aware of this structural problem. Until now, Elinor Ostrom still is the only female laureate (who regularly was on my lists before her turn in 2009). This shortcoming will certainly change – but when? I do hope already this year. Current embarrassing gender statistics must be improved.

My own preferred five main female candidates are this time again (without ranking):

Susan Athey (Stanford), Marianne Bertrand (Chicago) Ester Duflo (MIT), Claudia Goldin (Harvard), and Anne Krueger (Johns Hopkins Univ).

I also add my old and broad list of 35 (40) candidates from 2017 which still should have a probability of around 15 percent to include this year’s winner(s); 5 new names replace two economists who finally got the prize and three researchers who passed away. My list of possible candidates who I called in 2017 “courageous choices” can be found again.

Research areas that should be focused on in 2019 are – as last year – according to my own preference:

¤ growth and development theory, poverty, and international trade,
¤ labor market economics/the welfare state from both  a macroeconomic and a microeconomic angle,
¤ banking and financial markets (not so much monetary policy),
¤ field experiments as part micro research,
¤ politics, law, the environment, health, sociology, gender issues  – all with links to economics,
¤ econometrics and statistics.

Read my full article here >>

Hubert Fromlet