Deserving Nobelists

In October the economists Peter A. Diamond of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dale T. Mortensen of Northwestern University, and Christopher A. Pissarides of the London School of Economics were awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize for their work on "search frictions" in the labor market. reason asked Cafe Hayek blogger Donald Boudreaux, who chaired the economics department at George Mason University from 2001 to 2009, to name three economists who deserve the Nobel Prize but probably won't get it. 

1 Armen Alchian, University of California at Los Angeles. No scholar has matched Alchian's brilliance at identifying the full range of constraints and opportunities that guide human action and at explaining how these constraints and opportunities influence the evolution of social institutions, such as the firm and the not-for-profit university. 

2 Jagdish Bhagwati, Columbia University. Bhagwati is the dean of international trade economists. His detailed research into the effects of political institutions on trade is vital, and his tireless efforts to champion free trade against its countless detractors—in both scholarly and popular venues—is invaluable.

3 Gordon Tullock, George Mason University. Along with James Buchanan, Tullock fathered public choice economics. The seminal subjects Tullock's fertile intellect has explored include bureaucracy, majoritarian outcomes as public goods, law and economics, and the ill economic consequences of rent seeking.