Objavio: cronomy | October 15, 2007
3 Nobelovca
Jedino što sam ja “pogodio” za nobelovu iz ekonomije jest da će biti amerikanci (iako je jedan rođen u Moskvi). Niti jedna od onih drugih imena nije dobio, a to je bogami zateklo i sve ekonomiste koji su se bavili predskazivanjima tko bi mogao dobiti, kao što sam i napomenuo u postu o mogućim dobitnicima. Drugi put kad slušate ekonomiste koji daju predviđanja o ekonomiji imajte na umu da ne mogu predskazati ni tko bi trebao dobiti Nobela. Naravno postoji razlika između akademski-institucionalnih ekonomista i poslovnih. Poslovi su plaćeni za svoja predviđanja i poziciju o ekonomiji, drugi su plaćeni za svoj rad i razumjevanje. Pretpostavljam da ste već na drugim medijima pročitali o ovogodišnjim dobitnicima, uglavnom priča iz Assocoated Pressa. Još jedan dobitak za Chicago! Ovo prenosim kako su neki blogeri reagirali na ovogodišnju nagradu. Ja sam dodao linkove na njihove institucije za svakog dobitnika posebno.
Leonid Hurwicz, Eric S. Maskin and Roger B. Myerson won the Nobel prize in economics on Monday for developing a theory that helps explain how incentives and private information affect the functioning of markets.
This is precisely the kind of work which is going out of style in the broader profession. These guys are smart, smart, smart, and Hurwicz is probably the best known of the three. They are all high-powered theorists, doing incentives, mechanism design, and social choice theory. None of them are easy to explain to your grandmother… No doubt mechanism design, and the general problem of inducing truth-telling, will be with us forever. But how practical are these general results? Or have the theorists simply provided us with cautionary notes and left the real applications to the context-specific world of practice? Did these guys get at the real reasons why we don’t organize the entire economy as a second-price auction? –Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution
This line of work is not to my taste at all. It is highly mathematical and inward-looking. It looks at conditions for static efficiency (allocating a given set of resources) and ignores dynamic efficiency (how well institutions adapt over time). I regard the “mechanism design” literature as representing a lot of effort expended on papers that only interest the expenders. –Arnold Kling, EconLog
Mechanism design formalizes ways of thinking about how a social planner, manager, or parent can set up rules so that all parties involved have the incentives to act in the way that the planner/manager/parent prefers. This Nobel is not for the idea that you can design incentives this way, but rather for coming up with ingenious proofs that simplify the task of proving that, indeed, all parties have the right incentives — a task that can turn out to be awfully difficult. –Steven Levitt, Freakonomics
This Nobel prize is exactly the sort of thing that journalists have nightmares about. They wake up early, and read a citation from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences giving the Economics prize to three economists they’ve never heard of, for helping to develop an entire discipline – mechanism design theory – that they’ve also never heard of… A mechanism is a framework, basically, within which one finds a market. Some markets don’t need a mechanism to work well, but others do. For instance, let’s say that you have a monopoly, and a regulator. The regulator sets up a framework so that the monopoly doesn’t overcharge. Or let’s say you want to sell a very illiquid asset like a rare and unique painting. An auction house will set up a framework so that your painting can be monetized in a transparent manner. Mechanism design theory is the science of structuring such frameworks in an optimal manner. –Felix Salmon, Market Movers
NONE of these 3 economists appeared in the list of “favorites” in the Intrade marketplace… Next time you hear a complaint about the failure of economists to forecast major economic shifts, just remember this: we even have trouble forecasting who amongst us is being seriously considered for a Nobel. –George Borjas, The Borjas Blog
The Nobel committee has its own mind - Congratulations to Leonid Hurwicz, Eric S. Maskin, and Roger B. Myerson! It was their work on mechanism design that the Nobel Committee decided to honor this year, demonstrating once again that all that pre-announcement speculation rarely gets it right. Well, there is always another year… Dani Rodrik
This year’s Nobel Prize in economics goes to Leonid Hurwicz, Eric S. Maskin, and Roger B. Myerson. Eric used to teach economic theory at Harvard and was a great teacher and colleague. If my recollection is correct, when he moved from Harvard to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, he bought the house Albert Einstein used to live in. I wonder if there are any other houses that can claim two (unrelated) Nobel laureates. Greg Mankiw’s Blog
OK, mislim da do sada na blogosferi i wikipediji pročitao sve što sam mogao o tome što je točno “Mechanism Design”. Mislim da ne bi bilo loše kad bi imali barem jedan tekst i na hrvatskom
By: puzz on October 18, 2007
at 7:00 am
A sviđa ti se ha? MarginalRevolution je pisao o tome zadnjih dana najviše. Ja prevodim jedan članak za petak, ne stignem prije.
By: cronomy on October 18, 2007
at 7:13 am
“A sviđa ti se ha?”… Ah, jedna od mnogih stvari koje si ne mogu oprostiti je što na četvrtoj godini nisam odabrao izborni kolegij iz primjenjene matematike za ekonomiju. Tako da je moje znanje teorije igara, i sličnih ezoteričnih parafernalija na nivou rekla-kazala.
Enivej, počeo sam članak na voxEU: http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/656
By: puzz on October 18, 2007
at 6:00 pm
Ma dobro, osnove teorije igara možeš pronaći u svakoj boljoj knjizi iz mikroekonomije. Dalje sljedi, ako knjiga ima, preporuke što još pročitati, malo naprednije od osnova. Idem ja prevoditi sada…
By: cronomy on October 19, 2007
at 5:13 pm