Paul Krugman's profile in the New Yorker
The New Yorker Magazine routinely rejects my cartoon caption suggestions (for their weekly contest) and now it has selected to profile rather than me. These slights help me to keep working on academic stuff as I seek to rise in the rankings of economists. Over the next ten years, will Kahn or Krugman write better academic stuff? As you can see, Paul knows that his opportunity cost of another QJE is high.
"But it鈥檚 been a long time鈥攜ears now鈥攕ince he did any serious research. Could he, still? 鈥淚鈥檇 like to get back to it,鈥� he says. 鈥淚鈥檓 craving the chance to do some deep thinking, and I haven鈥檛 been doing a lot of that. I guess doing the really creative academic work does require a state of mind that鈥檚 hard to maintain throughout your whole life. Even Paul Samuelson鈥攖he bulk of the stuff you read from him is before he was fifty. There was an intensity of focus that I had when I was twenty-six that I won鈥檛 be able to recapture at fifty-six. You develop your habits of mind, and to a point that鈥檚 a good thing, because you learn ways to work, but it does mean that you鈥檙e less likely to come up with something really innovative. Even if I weren鈥檛 doing all this other stuff, I don鈥檛 think I鈥檇 be producing a lot of breakthrough papers. There鈥檚 crude stuff: if I do have some brilliant academic insight, what are they going to do, give me a Nobel Prize? . . . When I was younger, when I figured something out there was this sense of the heavens parting and the choirs singing that I don鈥檛 get now. And that鈥檚 life.鈥�"
Now, in general I agree with his life-cycle view of economic research but I can name four Nobel Prize winning counter-examples to Krugman's point here. Think of Becker, Heckman, Stigler, and Schultz. Each of these impressive guys did big big work after the age of 60. Krugman is still a kid and has no excuses about easing off the gas pedal.
-----------------------------------
海角大神 has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Their postings appear here on the Monitor's Money site as well as on their own individual blog sites. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the blogger's own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.
