Since I'm not an economist - nor do I play one on the Internet - I don't quite understand the hubbub over a New York Times columnist winning (approximately) $1.4 million in a Swedish lottery. Many reports curiously state that the lottery winner, Paul Krugman, won something called a "Nobel Prize". While there are five awards established by the last will and testament of the late Swedish chemist Alfred B. Nobel, none relate to economics. Instead, there is something currently known as Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels mine, which translated means "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel". Sveriges Riksbank is the Swedish central bank.

The bank, however, does not award the actual prize. That duty falls to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which has about 500 members, most of whom are, surprisingly, from Sweden. The Academy appoints a five-member committee to screen nominations using a process that, as best I can determine, is similar to how the U.S. Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences selects its winner for Best Cinematography. (I'd add that AMPAS has about ten times the membership of the Royal Swedish Academy, so it's possible that even more people vote on the Best Cinematography Oscar then the Sveriges Riksbank Prize.)

In addition to the Sveriges Riksbank Prize and two bona fide Nobels - chemistry and physics - the Royal Swedish Academy awards several other prizes, some of which are international like the Nobels and others limited to Swedish nationals. My personal favorite is the Gregori Aminoff Prize, an international award for crystallography, the "experimental science of determining the arrangement of atoms in solids." That sounds way cooler then the Sveriges Riksbank Prize or even the Best Cinematography Oscar.

My point here, of course, is that it's unusually silly to grant Mr. Krugman any particular respect or acclaim because a self-selected handful of people from a country of about nine million decided that they're the standard-bearers for all economics. It's nice that Mr. Krugman will receive a medal and a check for $1.4 million, but it doesn't make his ideas any more valid or alter the true principles of economic science. The Swedish Academy could have simply picked the name of a random economist out of a hat and its decision would have been equally valuable.



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