Asymmetrical Information

This year's IgNobels have been awarded too.

http://www.improb.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html

Krugman got passed over by both of them.

Better luck next year.

I always thought RBC theory was quite insightful and a useful counterpoint to the neoKeynesian market failure-based business cycle models. But anyone who takes it as the literal truth is nuts, as anyone who lived through the Great Vacation of the 1930's can attest.

I'm sure that you meant to say that the math of RBC theory is too complex--I know what you mean. The basic ideas--the primacy of technology shocks, intertemporal labor substitution, etc.,--are actually pretty straightforward concepts.

As Don notes, RBC/New Classical theory fails dismally when it comes to explaining the Great Depression.

Economists for decades were hung up with trying to explain the Great Depression. It's great if a theory is able to explain it, but not explaining it doesn't mean that the theory isn't useful.

And Prescott and Kydland have both done much more, besides that.

Mon Oct 11, Washington, AFP

Edward Prescott, who picked up the Nobel Prize for Economics, said President George W. Bush's tax rate cuts were "pretty small" and should have been bigger... "Tax rates were not cut enough," he said...

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041011/pl_afp/nobel_economics_us_taxes_041011212152
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Looks like Robespierre and his starve-the-beast Jacobins are still picking Nobelists.

Marginal Revolution is definitely magnificent (and not just because Tyler Cowen, our next President, has a penchant of calling you "ever-effervescent").

But it'd probably be more helpful for your readers if you amended the above link from their front page to Alex Tabarrok's actual discussion of real business cycles.

I am, however, not fond of the fact that the illustrative example involves the killing of cute little fishies. :(

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