The Nobel Prize Is a Central Economic Event of Our Lives

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I think it's an extraordinary event historically, the transformation of standard living. We will never know exactly on what happened in China because it is not a problem that is solvable per se. But we all agree that it is something which really combined in a very creative and actually I think very often haphazard way of different elements. And when it happened, it really by sort of stumbling going further and so on. It didn't happen that somebody had a blueprint for solving this kind of problem or solving small problems. So I think it's no doubt this is the biggest economic event in our lifetime.

Author and economist Branko Milanovic of CUNY talks about the big questions in economics with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Milanovic argues that the Nobel Prize Committee is missing an opportunity to encourage more ambitious work by awarding the prize to economists tackling questions like the rise of China's economy and other challenging but crucial areas of scholarship. In the conversation, he lays out what those questions might be and discusses what we know and don't know in these areas.