My Bet

A quantitative macro-fest: Sims, Sargent and Hansen.

It would be nice if they gave it to people prior to being almost dead. Poor Leo Hurwicz won last year. He was 90, and died within the year. It's almost a kick in the teeth at that point: all your contemporaries are dead, so the pleasure of saying 'ha-ha!' to your rivals is gone. You can't really spend it on women, fast cars, or even fancy vacations. Your family will be pretty unimpressed, because you always have to ask your grandkids for help with the internet, and so they think you are just a pronounced example of the Flynn effect. As Ronald Coase said when he received the Nobel: 'it's kind of strange getting an award in your eighties for work you did in your twenties'.