Far more important than the forthcoming US Presidential Election is the awarding of the Nobel titles this year. The official Nobel prizes will be awarded starting next Monday (see the schedule). As usually this blog’s author is mostly (though not exclusively, eg. I’ve always followed the Physics prizes, too) interested in the Economics prize, which is to be awarded last, on Monday, October 13; my prediction should appear here at least a day before — and no, unfortunately I don’t get any private signals… :-). Meanwhile, see also the Thompson Reuters predictions (alternatives) for the Economics (and not only) 2008 winners.
On the wackier side of science, an Economist already won a “Nobel” this year. Namely, Dan Ariely just won the IG Nobel for Medicine: “the prize for medicine goes to the enterprising economist who found that expensive fake pills work better than cheap [fake] ones“. At the same time, the IG Nobel for Economics was won by three evolutionary psychologists (ironically…), Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tyber, and Brent Jordan, “for discovering that exotic dancers earn more when at peak fertility” (more here). See the list of all Nobel IG prizes this year; ‘official site’ here. And here’s an article about the recent winners (via Greg Mankiw).
