Due to Sb issues, this post has been sitting unpublished for hours.
Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist, Princeton economist, and author of textbooks, academic treatises and popularizations of economics, was given this years Nobel Prize in Economics.
Because of his outspoken opposition to the Bush presidency, this decision will inevitably be treated as political, but that is grossly unfair. While he has indeed criticized the Bush administration, first narrowly criticizing candidate Bush's economic proposals, then broadening his attacks, his work as an economist is impressive. His textbook on international economics is standard in the field. In 1991, he won the American Economics Association's award for the most productive young economist. Roughly 40% of the winners of the John Bates Clark Medal have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in Economics.
The committee awarded him the prize "for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity," which encompasses both his work on New Trade Theory, as well as this work on spatial economics. I spent quite a while thinking about that latter category, and thinking about ways it might be applied to spatial ecology, or conversely, about ways in which spatial ecology could be applied to economics. Nothing ultimately came of that, but his work in the field is important and interesting, and well worth further work. That his research has such broad applicability speaks to its significance, and its worthiness of a Nobel Prize.
before the bush administration krugman's modus was to rag on left-wing economic thinkers like bob reich (he is a moderate liberal). people forget that....