Economix Blog: Further Reading on the Nobel Economics Laureates

CATHERINE RAMPELL

Dollars to doughnuts.

The spotlight today is on Christopher A. Sims of Princeton University and Thomas J. Sargent of New York University, the winners of the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

The two new laureates have very similar academic pedigrees: They both received their Ph.D.’s from Harvard in 1968, and both previously studied at the University of California, Berkeley. Several years later they both landed at the University of Minnesota. They are currently jointly teaching a graduate course in macroeconomics at Princeton.

Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The Nobel laureates Christopher A. Sims, left, a professor at Princeton University, and Thomas J. Sargent, a professor at New York University.

The prize committee has published a description of their work for the general public, as well as a more technical version.

Here is the only paper the two wrote together, from 1977.

Some other links for Dr. Sargent:

• Dr. Sargent’s home page, and his curriculum vitae.
• A summary of his contributions, written by Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University.
• Some of his older papers; some of his newer papers.
• An interview he did with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis in 2010.
• Another interview with the journal Macroeconomic Dynamics, in 2005.
• A (short) graduation speech he delivered on the University of California, Berkeley, about a few key economic principles.
• A Q.A. a representative of the Nobel committee (named Adam Smith, of course) conducted with Dr. Sargent.
• Video of a lecture Dr. Sargent gave at the London School of Economics in 2010, titled “Uncertainty and Ambiguity in American Fiscal and Monetary Policies.”

And some links for Dr. Sims:

• His home page, and his curriculum vitae.
• Another summary of contributions from Tyler Cowen.
• Links to his research papers.
• An interview he did with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis in 2007.
• An interview with The Journal of Business and Economics Statistics, from 2002.
• An interview with the journal Macroeconomic Dynamics, in 2003 (subscription required).
• An interview with a representative of the Nobel committee (Adam Smith).
• A video of a lecture from an Institute for New Economic Thinking conference in 2010. The lecture is titled “How Empirical Evidence Does or Does Not Influence Economic Thinking and Theory: Calibration, Statistical Inference and Structural Change.”
• One of his more famous papers on the statistical technique he developed to study the larger economy. (Warning: this is pretty technical.)

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=a03e6f8495ae928b3cec06dbfcbd516e