NES Alumni and Friends - Выпускники и Друзья РЭШ

This year Professor Andrei Bremzen will once again be running the Nobel Prize pool at NES. Please see instructions from Andrei below if you'd like to participate.  Deadline: 17:00 on  Friday, October 7, 2011.

The rules are simple: you give me 25 rubles (or any multiple thereof) for each name of an economist who you think will get the prize this year. All the proceeds, plus 100 rubles of my own contribution, will be shared among those who guess correctly (specifically, if X,Y and Z are awarded the prize, and I have 10 bets for X, 20 bets for Y and no bets for Z, then half the bank will be split among those 10 X bets and the other half will be split among 20 Y bets). That is, I am now opening the game by betting 100 "against all candidates". In case nobody guesses correctly, I keep all bets. Nobody else is allowed to bet against all. Multiple bets are very welcome.

You should see me in my office (which is inside room 1921) to place your bets. Please prepare a sheet of paper with your name and the names of your favorites prior to coming. If I am not in, feel free to slide the money and the sheet) under my door. Make sure you e-mail me to alert that you left the money and names for me (abremzen(at)nes.ru). If you are not around, e-mail me your bets and we will figure out how you can transfer cash.

The winner(s) will be announced on Monday, October 10, so you have until 5 pm, Friday October 7 to place your bets. As bets arrive, I will NOT disclose any statistics, so there is no point in postponing placing your bets.

The official site of the Nobel committee in Stockholm, www.nobel.se, has records of all the past winners (and so far nobody succeeded in winning more than one prize in economics). Also keep in mind that the prize cannot be awarded posthumously.

Every year people ask me to publish a list of candidates from which they can select. The Nobel committee never discloses any such lists. Of course, you may find all sorts of rankings on the web, but keep in mind that they are unofficial. In fact, my experience suggests that betting on the most popular candidate is not efficient – with the exception of Paul Krugman, none of the past winners were among top five in my betting registry in that year (I am running the NES pool since 2004). In particular, younger participants (e.g., first year students) should not be discouraged from betting by thinking that older guys know it better. They do not, as similar pools worldwide indicate. After all, the principal motivation behind this entire exercise is to make you have a look into the field, who did what etc. Use your own logic and intuition, not those of others who you think are informed better (they are not).

This pool is not restricted to NES community; please feel free to pass the rules on to whoever you think may be interested.

Good luck,

Andrei.