Angus Deaton’s Nobel Is a Victory for Globalization – And Raises Hard Questions About It

Economies are built on people’s choices, and the Nobel for economic sciences, the Sverges Riksbank Prize, has been awarded to Angus Deaton for his research in that area. “In a world where we increasingly measure welfare based on what we can consume, Deaton has given policymakers important tools to boost prosperity, particularly in poor countries, while arguing – sometimes controversially – that the world’s poor are in a far better place today than it was decades ago,” suggests Tim Fernholz for Quartz. Over the years Deaton’s research has complicated traditional models and theories by suggesting that aggregate models do not predict individual behavior. He developed models on individuals’ reactions to consumer prices, consumption over time, and poverty and consumption in developing nations. He has championed globalization for lifting millions from poverty, but also pointed to inequality as a dangerous trend and questioned the efficiency of foreign aid for hampering provision of basic services by governments in developing nations. – YaleGlobal