The graph #1 shows the number of Nobel Prize Laureates in different fields of economics. We divided the data into two periods (before 2000 and after 2000). The graph represents that there are some disciplines in economics without Nobel Prize winners during 15 years and on the other hand, there are disciplines with Nobel Prize winners only after 2000. This means that we see a significant progress in some field of economics while the other disciplines are not progressing as much.

Let me start analysing from the least progressing fields without Nobel laureates in the last 15 years.

•    Development economics, economic growth, economic growth theories, welfare economics and welfare theory – in the last 15 years there were no Nobel Prize winners from these fields. This means that there is no significant improvement of the growth and development theories. This means that everything is still based on the Solow/Classical/Neo-Classical growth models.  On the other hand, economic growth and development are very demanding topics nowadays.

Let’s have a look the number of publications which are published in these fields. We see that Economic growth theory is a field of economics which was one of the leading in the last century but after 2000 this field is not progressing at all. On the other hand, disciplines such as welfare economics and welfare theory progressing quite well in terms of a number of publications (we use google scholar statistics which is not very precise but give us the general picture).We can definitely say that these fields are still demanding among scholars.

Short summary: So, it is interesting that such demanding topics in the 21st century, such as development economics, economic growth and welfare economics are without Nobel laureates after 2000. This means that there is no significant progress in these fields. We still use neo-classical growth models with some modification and try to explain why countries growing rates are not the same. The most noteworthy case is Economic growth theory. Here we observe a huge amount of publications which are mostly empirical but not the theory itself. Is it “lack of theories”?

Another very interesting insight from the graph 1 is that in the case of international economics we see no Nobel Prize laureates after 2000. While we are living in the interconnected world (age of globalisation) and everybody is talking about an export, import, foreign investment and other topics which are very connected to international economics. On the other hand, we have Nobel laureates in regional economics. This means that regional cooperation between/within countries is a much more actual topic among scholars than countries international cooperation.

The graph #3 presents that regional economics is progressing more rapidly than international economics in terms of a number of publications. This result makes sense because all the aspects of international economics such as export, import, FDI and other are mostly related to regional level. So, “gravity aspect” matters.

Let’s switch to most progressive disciplines of economics

•    Labour economics, experimental economic, economic psychology and economic governance – all these fields are strongly connected to human psychology. So, we see a high collaboration of two science: psychology and economics. The logic of such link goes through the human behaviour. We know that in economics one of the main subjects are households. Their decisions affect both labour and goods market. On the other hand, households behaviour is mostly coming from their individual psychology.

So,  economic science is behaviour science and all the factors which affect humans’ behaviour also affect economics in general.

We should analyse also the following disciplines: microeconomics, econometrics, the economics of information, financial economics, game theory, and macroeconomics. These are the disciplines of economics which are progressing permanently. We observe many Nobel Prize laureates during the history (before and after 2000).

The most logical conclusion of the blog will be to ask yourself in which direct economic science is going to... (Check your master topics, best measure :))