Mixed feelings

Well the Nobel in economics has been announced and I'm sort of happy, a bit disappointed, but, cynically, not surprised. The Academy chose to honor Paul Krugman.

I have mixed feelings because I do think Krugman was on his way to some very important work in trade theory. I don't particularly agree with some of his conclusions regarding "managed trade," but I think his early work truly was in the Nobel neighborhood.

Then, however, Prof. Krugman became a celebrity columnist for the NY Times and he seemed to forget a lot of economics. There almost always was an economic theory to support his columnist claims, but he seemed only to seek out theories that supported a certain political party or, more often since 2000, he didn't care so much about supporting his favored party as doing everything possible to tear down the opposition. Now I'll be among the first to admit his favorite target needed some taking down, but I felt Krugman's approach was overly partisan -- for an economist.

See, that's where my mixed feelings come from. As an op-ed columnist, most of his stuff was well within the bounds of political discourse. As an economist, though, he knew he was not presenting a measured analysis of whatever the issue of the day was. The one that put the nail in his economist coffin for me was his series on poor employment numbers in 2004. I can't find a non-partisan link to the controversy right now, but there was pretty wide agreement that Krugman intentionally cherry-picked employment numbers (in a way he knew to be dishonest) to make Bush look bad. Worse than that, to me though, was when he used a highly misleading graph to "prove" the Council of Economic Advisors simply served as a lapdog to Bush. Here's a pretty good link to that one.

[Note that it's not just the righties who make this claim. In 2005 The Times' departing ombudsman chose to use his farewell column to hit Krugman: "Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults."]

He can be a partisan columnist if he wants, but he can't use that to advance his standing as an economist. Now the Nobel committee didn't cite his work as an op-ed columnist in awarding him the prize, but c'mon, does anyone believe he'd have won it otherwise? In my opinion, his major contributions to economics pretty much stopped after he became a regular Times' columnist.

Further, the committee chose to honor him as a solo winner. If the award really was for his work in trade (and related economic geography stuff), then there were several others equally as deserving. To me, it's the fact that he didn't share the award with anyone else that confirms the political nature of this award.

So, to sum up, I'm glad the Nobel focused on trade, but I'm disappointed that it chose to make such a blatantly (in my opinion) political statement with the award.

UPDATE: After reading some more economists' reactions to the prize, I may have to tone down my cynicism a little bit. Krugman's trade work really is garnering a lot of praise in the econ circles today, with many making it seem his prize was an eventual foregone conclusion. Of course there may also be a bit of "we don't want to criticize one of our own" in this thread. I still can't get past the feeling there was a pretty big dose of politics in his selection -- especially in the fact that the prize wasn't shared.