Paul Krugman is the economics Nobel Prize winner this year. He taught me international trade at Woodrow Wilson School. I am quite pleased. Now i can also say that i was once a student of a nobel laureate. That I learnt international trade from its greatest living theorist. Prof Krugman has won the award at a rather young age, he is only 55. He is probably the youngest economist to win the Nobel prize after Ken Arrow.
I took Krugman’s trade course only last year. So, the memories are still fresh. How was Krugman in class? The nobel website tells us: ” In addition to his scientific research, Paul Krugman is highly appreciated by his students as a pedagogical lecturer and author of textbooks”. I beg to differ. He is a great researcher and his textbooks are standard references in international trade and international macroeconomics, but a highly appreciated teacher, he was not. Not in my class, at least.
His lectures used to be like his op-eds–interesting but lacking in rigor. He taught an economics course without ever using a mathematical expression or a graph. What made things worse was that he had no time for students. Little preparation went into the lectures and there was hardly any engagement outside the class. We had to write a term paper for the course, but it was common knowledge that Prof Krugman seldom read those papers. So, I slacked, wrote a lousy paper, and still got a decent grade. Needless to say that he never retruned the paper and there was no feedback.
That said, he is a nice guy. Not very engaging, but friendly and generous. He gave his Krugman-Obstfeld textbook free to all the students in this other course on intenational macro that he was teaching in parallel with our international trade class. My friend, Arvind, took his autograph on the book, anticipating this day when he wins nobel. Arvind must be mighty pleased today. I remember, I also asked him for free textbooks for our class. He refused, because the textbook was not a required reading for our course.
Paul Krugman relishes his one-liners and he has a very high opinion of himself– as an economist and as a writer of english prose, both well deserved. He takes pride in his ability to write simple models. This is his great gift that his peers envy and students love. His abilty to get amazing insights out of really simple equations is paralleled only by George Akerlof’s early works on adverse selection. Referring to a trade model by Gene Grossman et al, he once said in class: “Gosh! there is got to be a simpler way to do this. If only I had more time…”.
I am happy that the nobel prize winner this year is an old teacher of mine. But there is a little sadness too. While honoring Paul Krugman, the prize committee overlooked two Indians long in the reckoning for a nobel prize on trade: Jagdish Bhagwati and Avinash Dixit. I was hoping for a joint award to all the three of them. Bhagwati is quite old, in his seventies, and somewhat desparate for the recognition. He once wrote in the Outlook magazine that he was not the only deserving Gujarati the Nobel Prize has ignored. The other being Mahatma Gandhi. Now it seems he may not win the Nobel at all. He is old and it may be a while before another nobel is awarded on trade. Interestingly, Bhagwati taught trade to Krugman at MIT. Avinash Dixit has a better chance; he is younger. He once wanted to meet me in Princeton because he wants to see everyone who is named Avinash. The meeting never happened. I will regret it the day Dixit becomes a noble laureate.
I am a little disappointed but my disappointment would be nothing compared to the conservatives of America, the Fox news types, who hate Krugman with a passion.
