Paul Krugman

From Philosopedia.org

Paul Krugman (28 February 1953 - )

Paul Robin Krugman, the son of Anita and David Krugman, was born in Long Island, New York. After attending the John F. Kennedy High School, in 1974 he earned his B.S. in economics from Yale University and in 1977 his Ph. D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In an interview with Jim Lehrer, Krugman's response to how he decided to become an economist:

PAUL KRUGMAN: Oh, that's a little embarrassing. I was - I don't know how many of your viewers watch science fiction, read science fiction, but this very old series by Isaac Asimov, the Foundation novels, in which the social scientists who understand the true dynamics save civilization.

And that's what I wanted to be. And it doesn't exist, but economics is as close as you can get. So when I was a teenager, I really got into it.

JIM LEHRER: And then - but you decided to study it then and become an economist?

PAUL KRUGMAN: Well, I took courses in it and found that I thought it was really interesting as an undergraduate. And then in my - late in my undergraduate, during my junior and senior years, I started working as a research assistant for some fine economists at Yale where I studied and that led me into the field.

JIM LEHRER: Did you have a master plan, a big list of expectations, "Hey, I'll be an economist and I'll do this, this, this?"

PAUL KRUGMAN: No, it's all come as a surprise. I thought I would have a quiet academic life, you know, wear jackets with leather patches on the elbows and sit in a chair smoking a pipe, except that I don't smoke. And all the stuff I've gotten into has been not at all what I'd had in mind.

Krugman taught at Stanford (1994-1996) and MIT (1984-1994; 1996-2000). From 1982 to 1983 he worked for the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Since 2000, he has been a professor of economics at Princeton University.

According to Michael Hirsh (Newsweek, 4 March 1996), President Bill Clinton considered Krugman for a leading post but, his outspokenness was "the main reason he Clinton administration didn't offer him a job." Not disappointed, Krugman said, "I'm temperamentally unsuited for that kind of role. You have to be very good at people skills, biting your tongue when people say silly things."

A journalist and author, he has written for Fortune, Slate, The Harvard Business Review, Foreign Policy, The Economist, Harper's, and Washington Monthly. Starting in January 2000, he has written twice-weekly Op-Ed columns in The New York Times, leading Washington Monthly to call him "the most important political columnist in America. . . . He is almost alone in analyzing the most important story in politics in recent years — the seamless melding of corporate, class, and political party interests at which the Bush administration excels."

In 2008, Krugman was the sole awardee of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, a prize worth about $1.4 million. It was given to recognize his work associated with New Trade Theory. In the words of the prize committee, "By having integrated economies of scale into explicit general equilibrium models, Paul Krugman has deepened our understanding of the determinants of trade and the location of economic activity.

Krugman, who grew up in a Jewish family, is married to Robin Wells, his second wife and a fellow professor at Princeton. Both resigned from their positions at MIT in 200 in order to assume positions at Princeton. They have no children.

Selected Works

Market Structure and Foreign Trade (with E. Helpman), MIT Press, 1985.

Strategic Trade Policy and the New International Economics (ed.), MIT Press, 1986

International Economics: Theory and Policy (with M. Obstfeld), Scott Foresman/Little Brown, 1988

Exchange Rate Instability (Lionel Robbins Memorial Lectures), MIT Press, 1988

Market Structure and Trade Policy (with E. Helpman), MIT Press, 1989

Foreign Direct Investment in the United States (with E.M. Graham), Institute for International

Economics, 1989

Rethinking International Trade, MIT Press, 1990

The Age of Diminished Expectations, MIT Press, 1990

Geography and Trade, MIT Press, 1991.

Exchange Rate Targets and Currency Bands (ed.), Cambridge University Press, 1992

Currencies and Crises, MIT Press, 1992.

Peddling Prosperity, Norton, 1994.

Empirical Studies of Strategic Policy (ed.) (with M.A.M. Smith), University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Trade with Japan: Has the Door Opened Wider? (ed.), University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Development, Geography, and Economic Theory, MIT Press, 1995.

Peddling Prosperity (1995, nonfiction)

The Self-Organizing Economy, Blackwell Publishers, 1996.

Pop Internationalism, MIT Press, 1996

The Accidental Theorist, Norton, 1998

The Return of Depression Economics, Norton, 1999.

The Spatial Economy (with M. Fujita and A. Venables), MIT Press, 1999

The Accidental Theorist (1999, essays)

Currency Crises (ed.), University of Chicago Press, 2000

The Return of Depression Economics (2000, nonfiction)

Fuzzy Math, Norton, 2001

The Great Unraveling (2003, essays)

(See Krugman's Curriculum Vitae. The New York Times (17 January 2002) contains Krugman's 12 October 2008 critique of British Prime MInister Gordon Brown's actions during the time of the 900-fall of the Dow Jones.)