Nobel pools

I've been accumulating Departmental guesses about this year's Econ Nobel. My guesses, registered Monday, were:

• Weitzman / Nordhaus for Environmental / carbon pricing
• Fehr / Thaler for behavioural
• Tirole for Industrial Organization.

I reckoned the Committee would pick something orthogonal to the financial crisis (IO), orthogonal but with mildly trendy connotations (environmental), or something to poke the mainstream in the eye (behavioural).

Folks in the department were invited to submit their most three most likely picks. Names revealed where permission's been granted:

• Gene Grossman (Trade);
  Weitzman/Nordhaus (Environmental) - says Andrea
• Tirole (IO);
  Nordhaus / Weitzman (Environmental);
  Kiyotaki and Moore (Macro/Finance).
• Weitzman (environmental, prices and quantities in particular);
  Deaton (panel econometrics / development);
  Would have gone Tirole but then too much overlap with Crampton, so Tullock
  [EC curses Stockholm for its neglect of Tullock, but thinks health issues will keep them from awarding it to him now].
• Thaler/Shiller (empirical behavioral finance) [EC: Can I switch to this one too? Much better fit for my guess at how Stockholm decides.];
  Posner/Tullock (rent seeking, law & economics);
  Phillies over Yankees in 6 games[???].
• Baumol;
  Shiller;
  Krueger [EC: If they give it to Krueger for rent-seeking, and Tullock's left off, Stockholm's off my Festivus card list permanently].
• Fama;
  Fama;
  Fama (with wild emphatic claims from this predictor about the consequences if Stockholm continues to neglect Fama).
• Shiller;
  Weitzman;
  Thaler.
• Weitzman/Nordhaus;
  Bhagwati;
  Easterly.
• Posner (law & econ);
  Hart/Moore (contract theory);
  "Richard Thaler behavioral claptrap" [you won't need three guesses to figure who sent this one].
• Paul Romer [EC: would be awesome];
  Avinash Dixit;
  Robert Barro.
• Thaler & Shiller;
  Fama;
  Nordhaus & Weitzman.

That's all of the nominations received as of close of business Wednesday. Lots of folks seem to have a background model that Stockholm's planning on sticking a thumb in the eye of conventional macro / efficient markets finance.

Tyler posts on who he sees as prime candidates, with lots of overlap with our Departmental pool - this year's must be particularly obvious:

1. Thaler joint with Shiller
2. Weitzman/Nordhaus
3. "Three prominent econometricians of your choice, bundled"
4. Tirole, possibly bundled with Hart

Tyler's list continues on, but he reckons the first two most likely.

A brave Stockholm would go with Fama to give it the opportunity to explain exactly what is meant by the efficient markets hypothesis: not that crashes won't happen but rather that we can't know when they will happen, or with Krueger/Tullock for rent-seeking, along with a likely Tullock address on rent seeking in stimulus packages. That's not going to happen.

Matt has opened markets on some of the most likely candidates at iPredict.