Edmund Who?

Evidently the granters of the Nobel Prize for Economics do not listen to the smart people; instead, they gave the prize to this guy. Smart person Tyler Cowen offers a gracious summary. The Nobelists’ own account is here. Greg Mankiw calls it “a wonderful choice,” without elaboration, but a commentator points out that Phelps does not occupy a prominent place in Mankiw’s own textbook. Brad DeLong (channeling Cowen) is uncharacteristically muted. Linda at Deeareemess is less impressed:

Elmer Fudd's claim to fame? Trivial modifications and applications of existing theory.. .. Phelps took the simple idea of the Phillips curve and extended it into the expectations-augmented Phillips curve.

I wasn't joking when I said (one year ago today) that the Bank of Sweden (a.k.a. Sveriges Riskbank) was a bigger threat to the long term well-being of the United States than al quaeda.

Barkley Rosser, commenting at MR, adds:

[T]he big joke here is that what they seem to be giving it to him for is an idea that looks more and more incorrect, even if his version of it is a bit more sophisticated than the alternative put forth by Milton Friedman: the natural rate of unemployment. That this is a core idea of the New Keynesians is one of the problems with the that group, a problem that they share with the New Classicals (and some of the Old ones as well, see Uncle Miltie). Frankly, it is a good thing that the Fed under Greenspan decided to downgrade this idea back in the 90s. It would seem that the Committee is giving prizes for ideas that are past their prime

Then for no apparent reason, he closes: “...although Phelps is certainly a worthy and deserving individual for his work.”