Watch this American economists in the buzz for Nobel

American economists in the buzz for Nobel


STOCKHOLM – Research into market behavior and the psychology of decision-making could be awarded the Nobel prize for economics on Monday and improve the weak U.S. representation among this year's Nobel laureates.
Betting agency Ladbrokes says American behavioral economists Richard Thaler at the University of Chicago and Robert Shiller of Yale University are the top bets for this year's award.
The 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.5 million) prize is not among the original awards established by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in his 1895 will, but was created in 1968 by the Swedish central bank in his memory.
Thaler is considered a pioneer in behavioral finance, having studied the psychology of decision-making and the behavior of markets, and Shiller is an influential economist who long predicted the U.S. housing bubble.
The economics prize — the last of this year's Nobel announcements — offers the U.S. a chance to boost its meager tally among the 2010 winners. So far there is only one American laureate: Richard Heck who shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry with two Japanese researchers.
Since the economy prize was first awarded in 1969, more than 40 Americans have received it. Last year, Americans Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson won the prize for their work in economic governance, marking the first time ever a woman received the economics award.
"Usually the prize doesn't go to work that is popular right now, or that lies close in time. It absolutely doesn't have to have anything to do with the financial crisis for example," said Hubert Fromlet, a professor in International Economics at the Jonkoping International Business School and Linnaeus University in Sweden.
"Research results have to lie some 20 years or so back in time because that's about the amount of time needed to see whether it's sustainable," he said.
Fromlet's own top picks include American economist Dale Mortensen of Northwestern University, whose research focuses on labor economics.
Other names in this year's speculation include American finance researcher Eugene Fama, French microeconomist Jean Tirole, and American macroeconomists Robert Barro and Paul Romer.
The science unit of Thomson Reuters listed political economics professor Alberto Alesina, economic professors Kevin Murphy, Nohubiro Kiyotaki at Princeton and John Moore as front-runners for this year's award.
Last week, British professor Robert Edwards was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for his fertility research that led to the first test tube baby. Russian-born scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov won the physics prize for groundbreaking experiments with graphene, the strongest and thinnest material known to mankind.
The chemistry award went to Heck and Japanese researchers Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki for designing techniques to bind together carbon atoms.
Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa won the literature prize and the imprisoned Chinese democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo was named the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
The awards are always handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.
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commited this Jimmy Carter Tries to Free American in North Korea

Jimmy Carter Tries to Free American in North Korea


A child greeted former President Jimmy Carter as he arrived in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Wednesday.
SEOUL, South Korea — Former President Jimmy Carter arrived in North Korea on Wednesday to seek the release of an American held by the North, its state-run media reported.
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Analysts in Seoul said Mr. Carter, who helped defuse a Korean nuclear crisis more than 16 years ago, could also try to help end the two countries’ impasse.

The man Mr. Carter is seeking to free is Aijalon Mahli Gomes, a 30-year-old Christian from Boston who was arrested in January for crossing into North Korea and sentenced in April to eight years of hard labor and fined $700,000. Last month, North Korea said he tried to kill himself out of “frustration with the U.S. government’s failure to free him.”

The visit by Mr. Carter, an evangelical Christian, is the second to North Korea by a former American president in a year on what the United States described as a private humanitarian missions. Last August, Bill Clinton flew there and met with the reclusive North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, to secure the release of two American journalists held for five months for illegal entry.

The Obama administration kept its distance, emphasizing that Mr. Carter not an envoy. “I’ll just say that President Carter is on a private humanitarian mission and I’m not going to comment more beyond that,” said Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman.

But as with Mr. Clinton’s visit, Mr. Carter’s has deeper diplomatic undercurrents. The North Koreans have used the captive Americans as bargaining chips, promising to release them in exchange for visits from specific high-profile Americans. North Korea can portray the meetings domestically as evidence of its international importance, while the United States has a high-level direct encounter that it cannot officially engage in.

But Mr. Carter has a long history as an independent agent, and some administration officials worried that he might undercut their policy in some way and make it harder to keep up the pressure on Pyongyang to give up its nuclear program.

It was not immediately clear who among the North Koreans would meet with Mr. Carter. The North Korean media reports said that he was greeted at the airport in Pyongyang, the capital, by Kim Kye-gwan, a senior diplomat who has been the North’s main envoy to the six-nation talks on its nuclear weapons program. The talks have been stalled for more than two years, but the North recently said it was willing to return to the discussions.

Higher-level meetings would appear to be likely, since Mr. Carter’s visit comes at a fraught time for North Korea. Its economy remains deeply troubled, and its ravaged agricultural sector has been further damaged by recent flooding. A March torpedo attack that sank one of the South’s warships, killing 46 sailors, drove inter-Korean relations to their lowest point in years and added to tensions with the United States. In addition, there may be a struggle over succession within the government of Kim Jong-il, who has had serious health problems.

The case of Mr. Gomes also touches on efforts of Christians in South Korea and the United States on behalf of North Koreans. His illegal entry was made in support of Robert Park, a fellow Christian from the United States who crossed from China in December to call attention to the dismal conditions in the North’s prison camps. Mr. Park was expelled after about 40 days.
Coppied by http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/world/asia/26korea.html