26 April 2006 - Krugman criterion

According to economist Paul Krugman, “The lavishness of a conference and its intellectual quality are almost perfectly negatively correlated.” In other words, a scientific conference is like an army: The more fun it is to be there, the less use it is. By the Krugman criterion, the political experiment of Nepal, one of the world’s least lavish places, ought to be an intellectual Himalaya. But then—economists are always wrong.