As much as Gore's Nobel Peace Prize is a joke, so is the economics prize this year, given "to three Americans for their work in mechanism design theory, a branch of economics that looks at the design of institutions in situations where markets do not work properly."
Of course, what they really mean is "situations where markets do not achieve our desired egalitarian results." Here's the evidence:
The prize winners’ groundbreaking work has been pivotal in assessing how institutions perform under such conditions, and in designing the best mechanism to make sure that goals, such as social welfare or private profit, are reached, the academy said. It also said the winners’ work has helped determine whether government regulation may sometimes be necessary.The academy said that mechanism design theory today plays a central role in many areas of economics and parts of political science.
Rest assured that these days the Nobel committee will almost invariably reward anyone who makes the case for more government regulation, whether it be under the guise of "global warming" or under the rubric of "market failure."
