Friday grab-bag

The 2013 Nobel(ish) Prize in Economics was announced on Monday. It went to Eugene Fama, Robert Shiller and Lars Peter Hansen. I knew a little about Fama and Shiller, which pleased me, and I didn't feel too bad about never having heard of Hansen, given that he does fiendishly technical mathematics that even his fellow economists find abstruse.

Fama is best known for the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, the notion that financial markets incorporate all available information into their prices; while Shiller “did more than anyone else to codify the way the efficient market hypothesis fails in practice.” A lot of bloggers have commented on the ying-and-yang aspect of the duo's joint honor. Here are two links that I found illuminating:

● Noah Smith: “If Fama were Newton, would Shiller be Einstein?”

● Daniel Davies: “Sveriges Riksbank prize actually, blah, blah, blah”

Additionally, Fama’s Nobel has given several bloggers the opportunity to revisit his widely assailed comments about the stimulus and about bubbles in general from a few years ago. As a journalist, I think a lot about which experts to trust, and why, and I find it weird and disconcerting that a Nobelist could commit "one of the most basic fallacies in economics." Apparently, however, it can happen. 

Video of the week: WXPN has been running their “Top 885 Songs of the New Millennium” countdown this week, and it's been great. As of noon Friday, they were up to Fleet Foxes, “White Winter Hymnal”: