The Nobel Prize Winners in Economics for 2010

And, yes, I know that it's not *really* the correct thing to call it:

Straight from the horse's mouth:

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2010 was awarded jointly to Peter A. Diamond, Dale T. Mortensen and Christopher A. Pissarides "for their analysis of markets with search frictions".

Congratulations to all three winners. I have to confess that I am not too familiar with their bodies of work, as I'm not not really into labour issues and unemployment. However, I did some search theory stuff back in my bachelors, and then - strangely enough - more recently in the applied case of marriage. Vierd. You never know where these things will pop up. Perhaps this, along with my recent discussions on the use of maths in economics, is signal to download some papers...

Then again, who has the time?! Better stick to the summaries for the moment. Speaking of which, Paul Krugman weighs in with praise here, while over at Marginal Revolution Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen offer their own admiration here and here. [Update: Well, one person certainly not interested in bestowing unfettered praise on our new laureates is, unsurprisingly, Bill Mitchell. I'm not completely familiar with all the Modern Money Theory (MMT) stuff, but have read some of Mitchell's work before. Not always easy as he must honestly compose the longest posts in the blogosphere.]

Back to the award, it's a good thing thing that I'm not much of a betting man, as my money would have been on Ernst Fehr (or Richard Thaler and Robert Shiller) for their work in behavioural economics (and finance). I also heard rumours about Martin Weitzman and William Nordhaus being in the running, which is great from my perspective as an environmental/resource guy. (I think Weitzman, in particular, continues to produce brilliant research.) However, perhaps their respective fields of behavioural and environmental economics were a step too close to the institutional/governance field of last year's winners, Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson.

And, let's be honest, unemployment (structural or otherwise) is the key topic of the moment.