Monday, October 11, 2010

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences Announced

I watched the live streaming from Stockholm (with the preceding countdown) of the announcement of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.

The recipients this year, for their work in markets with search frictions (think of buyers and sellers trying to find one another or as my husband says, "E-bay"), are: Peter Diamond of MIT, Dale Mortensen of Northwestern University, and Christopher Pissarides of the London School of Economics. The former two are Americans whereas Pissarides is a British-Cypriote.

Last year, one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was the first female recipient of this prize in 40 years, Elinor Ostrom!

Congratulations to this year's Nobel laureates!

While I was at MIT (under the sponsorship of an NSF Visiting Professorship for Women and then a UMass Amherst Research Fellowship Award) I took a short course from Peter Diamond and enjoyed it a lot. He was surprised that I was in the audience and told me that I was publishing on the course topics but I told him I always want to learn more.

Last January, I had the privilege of being invited to speak at the Symposium on Transportation Network Design and Economics at Northwestern University in honor of the visit of Martin Beckmann, the co-author of the landmark 1956 book, Studies in the Economics of Transportation, who had been on my dissertation committee at Brown University.

I am sure that this year's Nobelists in Economics will be celebrating with their families, friends, colleagues, and students as well as with their staff and administrators at their universities!

In December, the gala dinner and awarding of all the Nobel prizes for 2010 will take place in gorgeous Stockholm, Sweden, one of my favorite cities.