{"id":56,"date":"2002-10-10T12:44:35","date_gmt":"2002-10-10T20:44:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jokeofalltrades.com\/root\/?p=56"},"modified":"2002-10-10T12:44:35","modified_gmt":"2002-10-10T20:44:35","slug":"congratulations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhoke.name\/oldblog\/2002\/10\/10\/congratulations\/","title":{"rendered":"Congratulations!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nThe 2002 winners of the Nobel Prize<\/a> in Economics are Daniel Kahneman<\/a> of Princeton and Vernon Smith<\/a> of George Mason.\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nProfessor Kahneman, with frequent co-author Amos Tversky (d. 1996), demonstrated rather convincingly several failings of standard economic models of decision-making. He was able to show that the ordinary economic agent, far from being a hyper-rational homo œconomicus<\/i>, often employs simple heuristics in making decisions when faced with uncertainty. Kahneman’s deepest contribution to economic science, however, is more basic: he pointed out the need—and demonstrated the possibility—to incorporate a richer, more “realistic” psychology when modeling economic man. It is not always appropriate to model economic agents as acting “optimally;” sometimes it is necessary to take account of how they actually<\/em> act in practice.\n<\/p>\n

\nProfessor Smith was a pioneer in the field of experimental economics<\/a>, whereby test subjects are placed in real economic settings to test theories of economic behavior. Experimental economics has become a rather popular field in the past several years, largely due to the efforts of Prof. Smith. Smith himself has used laboratory experiments to test (among other things) market allocation mechanisms, theories of natural resource allocation and usage, bidding behavior in auctions, and public goods provision, as well as having organized workshops and grants to encourage other economists to engage in experimental investigation.\n<\/p>\n

\nI attended one of Prof. Smith’s workshops in experimental economics three years ago in Tucson, and it stands as one of the high points of my graduate education. Prof. Smith and the other faculty who conducted the week-long IFREE<\/acronym>\/ESL<\/acronym> Graduate Student Workshop impressed upon me both the narrowness of certain “standard” or “classical” economic models and the broad range of investigative techniques open to the modern economist. Prof. Smith, in particular, infused me with a renewed, intense fascination and curiosity for the discipline. That it did not last through the year is my own failing; I take it to be rather remarkable that he could incite my interest at all, given my current foundering.\n<\/p>\n

\nIncidentally, Prof. Smith is the third<\/em> Nobel Laureate with whom I have some personal connection. Last year’s winners in Physics, Carl Wieman<\/a> and Eric Cornell<\/a>, were researchers at JILA<\/acronym><\/a>, where I worked as an editorial assistant for a year during college. In addition to typing the Science<\/i> cover article that won them the Prize, I also frequently drove them to and from the airport. There were two major routes we could choose from, and in an effort to determine which was the faster, Prof. Wieman once timed the drive with a stop-watch. I remember distinctly that he recorded the time to the nearest hundredth of a second. We never got around to timing the other route…\n<\/p>\n

\nMy apologies for the gratuitous name-dropping.\n<\/p>\n

\nNP: Alkaline Trio<\/a>, Tuck Me In<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2002 winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics are Daniel Kahneman of Princeton and Vernon Smith of George Mason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhoke.name\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhoke.name\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhoke.name\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhoke.name\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhoke.name\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhoke.name\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhoke.name\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhoke.name\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhoke.name\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}