Monday, October 13, 2008

Paul Krugman a great economist, but more importantly a great person

What can you say about Paul Krugman. He's one of the great economists in history, and one of the worlds most brilliant people. This isn't a man who won the Nobel just by being a superworkaholic with the ability to do mechanical and not particularly hard to understand things and memorization fast, with great endurance and energy, so that he's the first with an Ivy pedigree to get to the frontier and write up something new formally, that's very valuable, but wasn't that hard to figure out. This is a man with immensely powerful high level intelligence, immensely powerful intuition.

More importantly, however, Paul is a great person. About two decades ago, in the prime of his career, he diverted a huge amount of his time and energy towards teaching economics to the general public and promoting the public good with his popular books, articles, and columns. It is likely this greatly decreased his academic output and odds of winning the Nobel and being recognized as one of the greatest economists in history. He made a great personal sacrifice to do good.

So I give my heartfelt congratulations to Paul Krugman, great economist, but more importantly great person.

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