The Nobel prize for economics will be awarded tomorrow and there are plenty of candidates in the running for the 8m Swedish krona (£775,000) award. Last year the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences shared the Sveriges Riksbank prize the official name of the economics Nobel between three men whose research into economic behaviour showed that markets can be distorted. Eugene Fama of the University of Chicago was rewarded for work showing that the market for financial advice is flawed and that stock picking is a mugs game, undermining the claims of investment managers that their services deserve extraordinary rewards. Robert Shiller of Yale University wrote Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism. He tracked property prices, showing that bubbles are not self-correcting, but continue to grow until they crash. The third economist to share the prize was the University of Chicagos Lars Peter Hansen, for his work on economic risk. This years potential winners include:
Marty Weitzman, Bill Nordhaus, William Baumol, Sir Partha Dasgupta
Environmental economics