Yet another American has won the Nobel Prize. “Edmund S. Phelps won the 2006 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Monday for explaining the relationship between inflation and unemployment, work that has had a profound impact on macroeconomic policy.”
Phelps is a professor at Columbia University and is 73 years old, he “challenged prevailing views in the 1960s by developing a new economic model that has helped corporate and government leaders balance inflation and unemployment in decision-making.”
Phelps: “I thought for a time I would get it in my 60s, then I thought I would get it in my 70s and, more recently, I’ve been thinking that I would get it in my 80s.”
Nope, he received it in his 70’s.
“Phelps challenged the prevailing view in the 1960s that there was a stable, negative relationship between inflation and unemployment, illustrated by the so-called Phillips curve.” He “put together a new model to describe the relationship between inflation and unemployment, known as the expectations-augmented Phillips curve.”
This means that America has won in all categories thus far. Only the literature and peace prizes are left for the rest of the world to be honored with.
It makes quite some sense for the US to win in the sciences: highly educated and talented Europeans, for instance, move to the United States because they have more options there (and freedom and money) to conduct researches, to publish, etc. In other words, America is the center of science these days.
So, although the US is the center of science these days and it is, therefore, perhaps somewhat logical for the US to win the Prizes in medicine, physics, chemistry and economics, I do not think that Americans will win the peace prize and / or literature one.
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