經濟學界的明日之星

International bright young things
The next generation of economists do their best work somewhere between the field clinic and the dissection room

TWENTY years ago The Economist wrote about eight young economists who were making a big splash in their discipline and beyond. One of them, Paul Krugman, recently won the Nobel prize for his models of international trade and economic geography. Ten years later we tried to repeat the trick, identifying another eight young stars, many of whom were taking their discipline far off-piste. One has since achieved even greater fame than anticipated. Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago became a household name as co-author of “Freakonomics”, a bestselling book published in 2005.

“Freakonomics” owed its origins to a profile of Mr Levitt in the New York Times magazine in 2003. Its success has won a new readership for economists, beyond the business section and the opinion columns, in the glossier pages of the weekend supplements. The best young economists, as a consequence, have already attracted plenty of attention. That leaves us in a bit of a quandary. We feel like lonely prospectors, who, returning to a favourite stream, find it overtaken by a gold rush.

Undeterred, we have given the prospecting pan another shake. We asked leading authorities in the discipline to name the best young economists in the world. Between them, they proposed over 50 researchers, but several names recurred on many lists. We have sifted the 50 down to eight, all of whom received their PhDs in the past ten years.

原文全文連結 (Economist.com)