2015 노벨경제학상, 영국 '앵거스 디튼' 프린스턴대 교수 2015 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, Angus Deaton Princeton University, NJ, USA(VIDEO)
노벨위원회,
'소비·빈곤·복지에 대한 연구' 높이 평가
"개인 소비행위 이해에 크게 기여한 인물"
Angus Deaton Princeton University, NJ, USA
edited by kcontents
케이콘텐츠 편집
노벨위원회는 2015 노벨 경제학상 수상자로 앵거스 디튼 프린스턴대 교수를 선정했다고 12일 오후(현지시간) 밝혔다. 스웨덴 왕립과학아카데미 노벨위원회는 디튼 교수의 소비, 빈곤, 복지에 대한 연구를 높게 평가해 이같이 결정했다고 설명했다. 위원회는 "복지를 증진하고 빈곤을 감소시키는 경제정책을 설계하려면 먼저 개인의 소비 행위를 이해해야 한다"며 이에 기여한 인물로 앵거스 디튼 교수를 꼽았다. 또 "지엽적인 개인의 선택과 총체적인 결과를 연결해냄으로써 그의 연구는 미시경제학, 거시경제학, 개발경제학 분야를 변모시키는 데 일조했다"고 말했다. 위원회에 따르면 디튼 교수의 연구는 소비의 다양한 분야들을 아우른다는 점도 특징이다. 또 디튼 교수의 연구는 학계는 물론, 실용적인 정책입안에도 영향력을 끼쳤다. 올해의 노벨 경제학상 수상의 영예를 안은 앵거스 디튼 교수는 영국 에든버러 출신으로 현재 미국 프린스턴대 경제학 교수로 재직 중이다. 한편 노벨경제학상은 1968년 제정돼 1969년부터 수여되기 시작했다. 노벨경제학상의 정식 명칭은 "알프레드 노벨을 기념하는 스웨덴 중앙은행 경제학상"이다. 노벨 경제학상을 끝으로 6개 부문 수상자가 모두 결정됐다. 시상식은 12월 10일 스웨덴 스톡홀롬과 노르웨이 오슬로에서 열릴 예정이다. 송은경 기자 songss@focus.kr (서울=포커스뉴스) |
Consumption, great and small
To design economic policy that promotes welfare and reduces poverty, we must first understand individual consumption choices. More than anyone else, Angus Deaton has enhanced this understanding. By linking detailed individual choices and aggregate outcomes, his research has helped transform the fields of microeconomics, macroeconomics, and development economics.
The work for which Deaton is now being honored revolves around three central questions:
How do consumers distribute their spending among different goods? Answering this question is not only necessary for explaining and forecasting actual consumption patterns, but also crucial in evaluating how policy reforms, like changes in consumption taxes, affect the welfare of different groups. In his early work around 1980, Deaton developed the Almost Ideal Demand System – a flexible, yet simple, way of estimating how the demand for each good depends on the prices of all goods and on individual incomes. His approach and its later modifications are now standard tools, both in academia and in practical policy evaluation.
How much of society's income is spent and how much is saved? To explain capital formation and the magnitudes of business cycles, it is necessary to understand the interplay between income and consumption over time. In a few papers around 1990, Deaton showed that the prevailing consumption theory could not explain the actual relationships if the starting point was aggregate income and consumption. Instead, one should sum up how individuals adapt their own consumption to their individual income, which fluctuates in a very different way to aggregate income. This research clearly demonstrated why the analysis of individual data is key to untangling the patterns we see in aggregate data, an approach that has since become widely adopted in modern macroeconomics.
How do we best measure and analyze welfare and poverty? In his more recent research, Deaton highlights how reliable measures of individual household consumption levels can be used to discern mechanisms behind economic development. His research has uncovered important pitfalls when comparing the extent of poverty across time and place. It has also exemplified how the clever use of household data may shed light on such issues as the relationships between income and calorie intake, and the extent of gender discrimination within the family. Deaton's focus on household surveys has helped transform development economics from a theoretical field based on aggregate data to an empirical field based on detailed individual data.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2015/press.html
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