Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Concerning Short Working Paper on Application of Game Theory in Political Economy And the Nash Equilibrium

One of the professors in the program have given me an idea of writing a short working paper on the application of game theory in political economy. If you didn't know, I was quite fond of political economy charts and typology charts in R^1 when I was a teenager. This included websites such as the Political Compass, the Nolan Chart and many others like it that are numerous in size and scope. What I want to do here is to rummage through the hordes of papers on this particular subject and write a very short working paper on the Application of Game Theory in Political Economy and how it pertains to the Nash Equilibrium.

In the meantime, I also just started a working paper on economics and public policy and how these are intertwined and how we can utilize powerful tools in both fields to further study income inequality. I'm not exactly sure what the narrow subjects I will focus on this particular working paper, but I will have a good idea as next year rolls around.

Sunday, October 11, 2015

October-November Reading List and Some Updates

I've been very busy in the last month, so I haven't had a time to work on the blog post here. In this particular blog post, I will give you my October and November reading list along with some updates which includes my predictions about the big Nobel announcement on Monday.

Reading List for October and November of 2015:

Econ Books:
1. Hyman Minsky - Stabilizing An Unstable Economy
2. Dan Ariely - Predictably Irrational (re-read)
3. Robert J Shiller - Irrational Exuberance 3rd Edition
Non-Econ Books:
1. David M. Broussard - A Radical Approach to Real Analysis (Already finished)

There are other articles and probably more books I'll probably read, but primarily these are the ones I will read. The backlog is enormous as I haven't finished all of the books I was meant to read throughout these times.

As for several updates, I will definitely be writing up the material promised in my last blog post in the coming weeks as I will have some extra time to do so.

My predictions for the 2015 edition of the Nobel Prize in Economics:

Here are my picks for favorites, middle level chances and potential "dark horses":

Favorites:
1. Paul Romer (New York University) - A top macroeconomist known for his work in economic growth. He has one of my favorite papers that I have been reading and re-reading for my working paper.
2. Robert Barro (Harvard University) - A top macroeconomist who is mostly known for his work in growth theory, business cycle theory and a prominent new classical macroeconomist, which is the direct competitor to the top New Keynesian school. Probably I'd put him as my top pick for this year's Nobel Prize
3. John List (The University of Chicago) - He's the Department Chair at the University of Chicago, who specializes in field experiments in economics, which is what landed this University of Wyoming PHD graduate at one of the world's most famous economics departments.
4. Stephen Ross (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) - One of the top guns in the field of finance. I rate him as one of the sharpest minds in all of economics and he should be winning a Nobel Prize for his work in finance.
5. Charles Manski (Northwestern University) - Has an outstanding papers on rational choice theory, but his work also focuses on social policy analysis.
Middle Level Chances:
1. William Nordhaus (Environmental economics)
2. Richard Thaler (Behavioral economics)
3. Michael Woodford (Monetary economics)
4. Nobuhiro Kiyotaki (Macroeconomics)
5. Paul Milgrom (Game Theory/Auction Theory)
6. Alan Krueger (Labor Economics)
7. David Kreps (Game Theory/Corporate Economics)
Potential "Dark Horses"
1. Ben Bernanke (This would be the biggest shocker since Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize by himself)
2. Richard Blundell (Many people have him as their favorite, but I have it here based on the other notable economists who have not won the Nobel Prize yet)

We will wait and see who wins the Nobel Prize and I will be diligently working on trying to get a couple of blog posts out before the end of this month!