GORAN K. HANSSON: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
has today decided to award the Sveriges Riksbank
Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel
to Angus Deaton, for his analysis of consumption,
poverty, and welfare.
ANGUS DEATON: Looking back on it,
it seems like a sort of golden fairytale adventure, in which
it's really hard to believe it was real,
even from the first phone call, when they said what
they were giving it to me for.
And I'd always sort of thought that I
had relatively low chance of getting it,
because they like to say they're giving it for one big,
deep thing.
They sort of saw a theme in this, in terms of it
all being about welfare and measurement.
There is a theme of that sort, and that theme has been there
for a very long time.
CHRISTOPHER L. EISGRUBER: I myself first met Angus shortly
after I joined the Woodrow Wilson School faculty,
and was immediately impressed with his leadership
in the school and his willingness
to tackle important questions.
I am thrilled that this year's Nobel Prize was awarded
to someone who is both a great economist
and a great Princetonian.
CECILIA ROUSE: I believe that Angus Deaton's work and Angus
Deaton is motivated by public policy in everything
that he does, whether it's looking at consumption, income
inequality, poverty, that he is motivated to better understand
the world to make it a better place.
ANNE CASE: He brings This curiosity to the question,
and has never lost that.
His sense of wonder about the world
is, I would say, second to none.
HENRY FARBER: He is one of the few economists I really
want to emulate, because he's what I
would call a true intellectual.
He reads voluminously.
He reads everything he can get his hands on.
So he always has a broad view of the problem he is working on.
JANET CURRIE: I think Angus is one of the people
that best embodies a traditional notion that both data
and theory are very important.
ILYANA KUZIEMKO: Angus' style of research I think of as
incredibly liberating, to me as a young assistant professor,
when I came to Princeton.
Both Angus and Anne just made me feel
like I didn't have to work on one idea, which I
think is very much Angus' work.
And I think that's sort of indicative of the way the Nobel
Prize gave Angus an award for being Angus.
CHRISTINA PAXSON: Angus approaches problems
in a very distinctive way.
And I guess I would say he almost approaches them
like a detective.
He comes up with a very interesting,
important question.
He wants to find out the answer to it.
He doesn't have any preconceived notions about what
that answer might be, and he's as likely
to find something that is unexpected as something that's
expected.
GORAN K. HANSSON: Dear Professor Deaton, you
are an optimist, a skeptic, and a humanist.
And above all, you are an empiricist, always determined
to confront what we believe with what we can know, just
like Alfred Nobel.
It is an honor and a privilege for me
to convey to you, on behalf of the Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences, our warmest congratulations.
May I now please ask you to step forward and receive your prize
from His Majesty, the King.
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ANGUS DEATON: One of my greatest pleasures in recent years
has been seeing the subject matter of economics
broaden and expand.
It has not given up its core themes, its measurement,
or its mathematics, but it has re-embraced its origins
in history, in psychology, and political science,
in sociology, and in philosophy.
It has become a richer and more humane subject.
ORLEY ASHENFELTER: What probably makes him exceptional--
and I think maybe the Nobel committee appreciated--
is that he doesn't leave it at perfecting or improving economic theory.
He tries to take that to some data
and use it to explore the details of what
he's discovered.
ANNE CASE: Angus came to Princeton in 1983.
And starting with that Class of 1983,
he has left an indelible print on a generation of students who
have come through Princeton.
He is a terrific lecturer.
He is crystal clear, and he is really excited about the work.
And he makes other people excited about the work.
JANET CURRIE: Angus was one of my first teachers at Princeton.
So I actually still remember having
him walk into the classroom.
And I don't know exactly what I expected, maybe some little
wiry Scotsman.
And this great, huge bear of a man walked in.
He was taller than the blackboard.
I was really impressed.
And then of course when he started to talk,
I was even more impressed.
He gave an absolutely beautiful course on econometrics.
He was one of my advisers for my dissertation.
I have known Angus for a long time.
One characteristic that stands out, he's very funny.
He's very knowledgeable about many subjects.
If you had to pick one person to have dinner with and be certain
that you would not be bored, he would be a very good person
to pick.
ILYANA KUZIEMKO: Angus the man, well--
How would I describe Angus?
Probably best not to talk to him after a game
in which the Yankees lost in a close situation.
HENRY FARBER: Angus is completely human.
I mean, he doesn't hide much.
So he lets it all hang out.
And so that makes him a good friend,
and just a good person to be around because
for a person of his accomplishment
to be as natural as he is, to me is a gift to me, if not to him.
CHRISTINA PAXSON: I should tell you
that I came to Princeton University because
of Angus Deaton.
I was a labor economist looking to turn into a development
economist, and he was an econometrician
who hadn't been at Princeton long who wanted to become
a development economist.
And Angus' offer to me was, come to Princeton,
I'm putting together a group, and we
can do this, become development economists, together.
And the span of my collaboration with Angus
lasted literally decades.
And over that period, we wrote many papers together,
some of the papers that I think are the most fun papers
I ever worked on.
And so he was a colleague, and he has been a teacher,
and he's been just a tremendous friend.
CECILIA ROUSE: One of the great things about Angus Deaton
is that he is a great colleague, he's a great mentor,
he's a good friend.
He's just an overall wonderful person,
so we couldn't be more thrilled that the world has finally
recognized, or at least the Nobel Prize committee has
finally recognized, not only his contributions to economics,
but that this is really a wonderful scholar who's
contributed to all of our intellectual thinking,
and to all of us as a community.
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