Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Baumol's disease Prize?

So Monday they'll announce the Sveriges Riksbank Prize (aka Nobel). Both The Guardian and Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution Blog bet on William J. Baumol, who was nominated for his work on entrepreneurism. Baumol would be a worthy winner for the 'Nobel.' But that's not his best work, in my view, since it relies on the same mainstream flawed supply-side stories to explain economic growth. But Baumol's Disease is an important insight, and one of the few regularities in economics treated like a scientific law and named after the economist that observed it, together with Okun's Law, Thirwall's Law, the Prebisch-Singer Effect, the Balassa-Samuelson Effect, and Kaldor-Verdoorn's Law.

PS: Baumol's contributions are extensive, from money demand, to history of ideas (including this paper on Say's Law, which is named after an economist, but is not a regularity and it's not really a law), to the analysis of productivity, including work with Marxist author Ed Wolff.

2 comments:

  1. I totally agree. Baumol's disease is one in an illustrious little group of economic laws that really live up to we espect of a law in social sciences! But I guess Stockholm will disappoint us again ...

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    Replies
    1. It would be a pity, he is one of the last open minded Neoclassical Synthesis guys still around.

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