Paul Krugman

Paul Robin Krugman (born February 28, 1953) is an American economist whose academic work on international trade and economic geography earned him the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2008. Krugman's early career included positions at Yale University starting in 1977 and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1980 to 2000, followed by professorships in economics and international affairs at Princeton University until 2015, after which he joined the City University of New York Graduate Center as a distinguished professor. His seminal contributions include the development of new trade theory in the late 1970s, which incorporated economies of scale and imperfect competition to explain patterns of intra-industry trade between similar countries, challenging traditional comparative advantage models reliant on factor endowments. Extending this framework, Krugman formulated new economic geography models demonstrating how increasing returns and transport costs lead to agglomeration of economic activity in core regions, fostering urban concentration and regional disparities. Beyond academia, Krugman served as an op-ed columnist for The New York Times from 1999 to 2024, where he frequently advocated Keynesian fiscal expansion during downturns, critiqued supply-side economics, and emphasized income inequality as a policy priority. His public interventions, including endorsements of Democratic administrations' stimulus measures, have influenced policy debates but also sparked controversy over predictions—such as warnings of prolonged depression without aggressive intervention post-2008 or severe fallout from fiscal conservatism—that diverged from subsequent empirical outcomes, prompting critiques of overreliance on models amid political advocacy.

Paul Krugman was born on February 28, 1953, in Albany, New York, to David and Anita Krugman, who belonged to a Jewish family of Eastern European descent whose ancestors had immigrated from regions including Belarus.