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Technology & Innovation

2010 Nobel Economics Prize

“Peter Diamond’s Nobel prize in economics is an unusual example of useful economics combined with timely politics.” The Guardian on the would-be government appointee.
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“This year’s award—properly known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel, a later addition to the Nobel line-up—is unusual in that the underlying research couldn’t be more timely given the current state of the U.S. economy. While it’s an easy criticism of conventional economics that it makes too many unworldly assumptions about equilibrium and perfect knowledge in pursuit of a theory, that’s not the case for this year’s winners. … With U.S. unemployment unusually high and likely to remain stubbornly so over the next few years, economic policy-makers are faced with difficulty in constructing the right mix of responses.”

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The winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced this Friday, October 7th. Last week, a former Norwegian prime minister ignited speculation about this year’s winner by announcing, “It will be an interesting and very important prize … I think it will be well-received.” 
It’s plain to see that I’m an optimist, sometimes more than is socially comfortable. The ease with which I dismiss the disastrous economic decline above serves as one example of that. I wrote that the recession will benefit our political system, and, before I cut this line, as having “rewarded our company for methodical execution and ruthless efficiency by removing competitors from the landscape.” I make no mention of the disastrous effects on millions of people, and the great uncertainty that grips any well-briefed mind, because it truly doesn’t stand in the foreground of my mind (despite suffering personal loss of wealth). Our species is running towards a precipice with looming dangers like economic decline, political unrest, climate crisis, and more threatening to grip us as we jump off the edge, but my optimism is stronger now than ever before. On the other side of that looming gap are extraordinary breakthroughs in healthcare, communications technology, access to space, human productivity, artistic creation and literally hundreds of fields. With the right execution and a little bit of luck we’ll all live to see these breakthroughs — and members of my generation will live to see dramatically lengthened life-spans, exploration and colonization of space, and more opportunity than ever to work for passion instead of simply working for pay. Instead of taking this space to regale you with the many personal and focused changes I intend to make in 2009, let me rather encourage you to spend time this year thinking, as I’m going to, more about what we can do in 2009 to positively affect the future our culture will face in 2020, 2050, 3000 and beyond.

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