Alleged economist wins Nobel Prize [updated]

The Nobel Prize in economics has just been awarded to alleged economist Paul Krugman [hat tip Anti Dismal].

I bet when George Reisman read that he coughed all over his corn flakes.  "Alleged economist" is his term for Krugman.  He's also described him as "determinedly uninformed," "a professional bleeding heart 'liberal'," a promoter of "the alleged horrors of economic freedom," and a "non-reader."

Anyway, since Professor Reisman is still on holiday, here's some tributes to the 'great man' from some other economists, only some of them alleged:

• Peter Boettke: "...  the Swedes just made perhaps the worst decision in the history of the prize today in naming Paul Krugman the 2008 award winner."
• Boettke again: "Krugman's work [for which he was awarded the Nobel] devolved from science to ideology and finally to political partisanship...  This would be innocent enough if Krugman were just another political pundit, but now the prize has given him an enhanced platform from which to pronounce his partisan positions as if they are grounded in economic science."
• Tim Harford, The 'Undercover Economist':  "Mr Krugman has long been seen as a future Nobel laureate. He won the John Bates Clark medal for young economists in 1991, an award which is often a precursor to a Nobel. Yet if the choice is not surprising, the timing – just before the US Presidential election – might be."
• Tyler Cowen: "I have to say I did not expect him to win until Bush left office, as I thought the Swedes wanted the resulting discussion to focus on Paul's academic work rather than on issues of politics.  So I am surprised by the timing but not by the choice."
• Greg Mankiw: "No one knowledgable about developments in the theory of international trade could have doubted that Paul was on the short list [for the Nobel]. The timing, of course, was impossible to predict, and I am a bit surprised that the Nobel committee did not award the prize jointly with some other economists who worked along similar lines. But the prize itself was an easy call.
• Per-Olof Samuelsson: "I guess it's time to feel ashamed of one's nationality!"
• And some humour:   "The stock market rallies 900 points on Paul Krugman winning the Nobel.
  Why not this is as good a reason as you often see in the popular press?"
• Mises Economics Blog: "The Nobel Prize committee seems to have gone out of its way exclusively to cite Paul Krugman's "analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity," contributions which students have appreciated and also criticized ... Krugman wins [but] not for his Keynesian macroeconomics.
      "Of course, the prize confers a broader invitation to take all his other ideas seriously, among which his criticism of Austrian trade cycle theory, a criticism to which Tyler Cowen points with admiration.
      "Here is Shawn Ritenour's excellent review of some of Krugman's work in this area. He argues that Krugman is not a neo-Keynesian or a proto-Keynesian or any other variety; he is just a plain old-fashioned paleo-Keynesian. Here also are Roger Garrison and John Cochran responding to Krugman."

UPDATE 1:  Two more goodies:

• From William Anderson: "Today's announcement that Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in economics, although not earth shattering, indicates that outright political partisanship is not a deterrent to winning. This is not as tragic a moment in western civilization as the sacking of Constantinople in 1453 or the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, but it suffices as one of those sad moments we will regret over time.
• Lew Rockwell: "With the sole and shining exception of F.A Hayek, who was forced to share his prize with a Swedish communist, every other Nobel econ winner has been a shill for central banking. This year especially, the central bankers wanted a loyal propagandist for endless currency depreciation."

UPDATE 2:  And Canterbury Uni's Paul Walker sits on the fence:

• Many people have many reasons for not liking the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Paul Krugman and to be honest I share many of them. But I also have to admit that there are also good reasons why he got the prize.  [His his work on strategic trade theory and the new economic geography] does justify the award of the Nobel. I do however share the surprise of Mark Koyama at Oxonomics over the award.

  I always envisioned Krugman winning jointly with Dixit or perhaps with Bhagwati or another trade theorist.

  A joint prize between two or all three of Krugman, Dixit and Bhagwati would have made a lot of sense.