Winner of the 2008Nobel Prize for Economics.
NYTimes OpEd columnist.


Highlights

Paul Krugman is the world’s preeminent economist, having won the 2008 Nobel Prize for Economics. An insightful, outspoken Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times, he is a passionate and articulate speaker, with a gift for relating global economic events to his audiences, and committed to speaking the truth as he sees it in the most compelling terms.

His twice-weekly Op-Ed pieces for The New York Times model the depth of insight and the unflinchingly outspoken style he brings to his speeches.

He is the author of several books, including most recently, The Conscience of a Liberal, and of The Great Unraveling, a bestseller.

In response to the current financial crisis, Professor Krugman has released an updated edition of his prescient 1999 book, The Return of Depression Economics, in which he warned—almost ten years ago—of the problems we face today. The new book is titled The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008. See below.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Krugman’s work in economics has earned him broad acclaim from the economic press and several prestigious awards, including the John Bates Clark medal from the American Economic Association for his work in international trade and finance. He is recognized worldwide as a leader in the fields of economic geography and the role of increasing returns in shaping international trade.

Paul Krugman is professor of economics at Princeton University.

The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008

With The Return of Depression Economics, published in 1999, Paul Krugman surveyed the economic crises that swept Asia and Latin America in the 1990s and warned that, like diseases that have become resistant to antibiotics, the economic maladies that caused the Great Depression were making a comeback. Now depression economics has come to America.

In this greatly updated edition of his prescient book, Krugman shows what caused the current crisis and how regulation failed to keep pace with an increasingly out-of-control financial system, and he lays out the steps we must take to contain the crisis and turn the world economy around. Lucid, lively, and supremely informed, the Nobel Prize winner has made another debate-defining contribution to our understanding of economics and to our economic policy options.

Krugman the Economist

Paul Krugman won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences this year for his groundbreaking work on international trade and economic geography. (To read his own description of the work for which he won the Nobel Prize, click here.) He is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes. Professor Krugman is one of the founders of the "new trade theory," a major rethinking of the theory of international trade, for which he also received the John Bates Clark medal in 1991 from the American Economic Association, a prize given every two years to "that economist under forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic knowledge."

He also is the leading pioneer in economic geography—the economic dynamics that determine how and why certain places (like Silicon Valley) end up specializing economically and the advantages this kind of clustering brings to companies and economies. For example, there has been no important commercial traffic on the Erie Canal since 1850, yet the head start that canal gave to New York City has allowed New York to remain the largest US city and its major commercial center to this day.

The overarching theme to his work: bringing the theory of increasing returns into the economic mainstream. ‘Increasing returns’ is the technical term for the phenomenon that success tends to breed further success—that economics is dynamic, not static, and that the multiple choices available to economies eventually get sorted out through the accumulation of initial advantages that may be accidents of history. He’s applied increasing returns theory to international trade and geographic clustering.

Mr. Krugman's current academic research focuses on economic and currency crises.

Krugman the Commentator

Paul Krugman has been doing and writing policy-oriented economics almost his whole career. He was a staff economist on international trade in 1982 as part of a team put together to deal with the recession by President Reagan. His own liberal politics made it a short stay. He’s been a policy observer and contributor ever since, and he’s always had a distinctive attitude. Here he is on how policy decisions are really made:

"The fact is that most senior officials have no idea what they are talking about: discussion at high-level meetings is startlingly primitive. . . Furthermore, many powerful people prefer to take advice from those who make them feel comfortable rather than from those who will force them to think hard. That is, those who really manage to influence policy are usually the best courtiers, not the best analysts. I like to think that I am a good analyst, but I am certainly a very bad courtier."

Credentials

• Winner, 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics Sciences
• Professor of Economics, Princeton University
• Recipient, American Economic Association John Bates Clark medal, best American economist under 40
• Named America’s most important columnist, Washington Monthly
• Named columnist of the year, Editor and Publisher magazine
• Staff member, President’s Council of Economic Advisors