Congratulations to the 2011 Nobel Prize Winners in Economic Sciences -- Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims!

The Nobel prize committee has announced the 2011 winners in Economic Sciences and they are Professor Thomas J. Sargent of NYU and Professor Christopher A. Sims of Princeton University.

The announcement was made in Stockholm, Sweden a short while ago.

I have heard both of these eminent economists speak through my association with the Society for Computational Economics, its conferences and its journal that I serve as an Associate Editor for.

These economists value and engage in empirical research as well as the development and implementation of algorithms and the associated computations.

The Nobel committee selected them: for their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy.

Now, for another "small-world" phenomenon.

Last year, Dr. Elinor Ostrom, the first female (and still only one) , received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences (and we had the pleasure of hosting her at UMass Amherst recently).

In this blog last year I wrote:

Interestingly, I had contributed a chapter on parallel computation to the first volume of the Handbook of Computational Economics, whereas Ostrom had contributed a chapter on governing social-ecological systems with Janssen to the second volume. The editors of these two volumes were, respectively, Hans Amman, David Kendrick, and John Rust for the first, and Leigh Tesfatsion and Ken Judd for the second volume. These are my good colleagues from the Society of Computational Economics.

Coincidentally, this year's Nobel laureate, Thomas A. Sargent, also had a chapter in the first volume of the Handbook of Computational Economics that my chapter appeared in!

Nice to be in the presence of greatness (or at least my chapter is).

More info on the Nobel laureates (and how they heard the news) can be found here.