Matt Nolan

New Zealand’s sexiest economist 2015: Voting

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During the nomination round this year I kept hearing the same questions coming up.  Who am I supposed to nominate?  Why would I nominate someone?  How can I mix the ideas of economics and sexiness?

As this is an economics blog the vast majority of these comments came from economists or people with a strong interest in economics.  Now I’m yet to meet a person who “does” economics at either a professional or amateur level whose focus is on money or status.  Instead the interest in economics, and the corresponding study of economics, has come from an interest in understanding the social world – and a desire to understand if there is some way of making it better.

As a result, motivating nominations was easy, all I had to do was tell people to nominate an economist who has helped them to satisfy this desire to understand the world – specifically New Zealand.  What New Zealand economist has offered you insight into the world, and motivated you to dig deeper into your own understanding of the New Zealand economy and society.  That is where economics meets sexy.

With that in mind the nomination process is over.  Now it is down to you, dear reader, to determine which of these 20 economists most closely satisfies your personal definition of sexy – your choices will decide who wins “New Zealand’s Sexiest Economist 2015” (NZSE15).

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Matt Nolan

New Zealand’s sexiest economist 2015: Nominations open

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It is hard to believe it has already been nearly a year since we have celebrated the work of New Zealand economists with a sexiest economist competition – and nearly two years since the competition kicked off.  However, it has been a year, so we’re doing this all over again.

Last year we introduced a nominations round.  Many people complained that their favourite economist wasn’t in the competition – which I’m guessing is a sign of regret that they didn’t get around to nominating them.

I want everyone to feel that they have had the chance to say “I think this economist does the sexiest economics, and is therefore my sexiest economist“.  As a result, this year I want all of you to take nominations very seriously.  On that note, here are the rules:

  1. The nomination must be for a public facing economist that is involved with New Zealand.  This is defined in more detail here.
  2. You can nominate more than one economist – but I’m still not allowing you to rank economists in the nomination round.
  3. You get an extra 1/4 of a nomination point for the person if you send me an economicsy looking picture of the economist.
  4. You get a FULL extra nomination point for writing a paragraph describing why your economist produces sexy economics.  I am very excited to see what people write.

Nominations will close at 5pm on Thursday the 12th of February (New Zealand time).  Voting will commence at 8am Friday the 13th of February (again, NZT).  This way you will be able to discuss who you are going to vote for with your partner during your Valentines Day dinner on Saturday.

You can nominate people in a number of ways:

Note:  I’m going to reiterate here to keep it classy – the purpose of the competition is to celebrate economists work, not to attack economists.  Let’s objectify the economics not the economists.  I will come down hard on any lewd or insulting comments, with the fire of a thousand economists who are being told that economics isn’t a science – you have been warned.

Matt Nolan

New Zealand’s sexiest economist: The results are in!!

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Wow.  What a roller-coaster ride that was.  The lead changed hands countless times (as I wasn’t counting), but in the end our sexiest economist poll did have an outright winner.

It is my privilege to announce that the deserved winner of the 2014 New Zealand sexiest economist competition was Read more

Matt Nolan

New Zealand’s sexiest economist 2014: Voting

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After an exhaustive nominations round the final 20 New Zealand economists have been selected.  To quote from someone who nominated for this round of “New Zealand’s Sexiest Economist” (NZSE).

At first I thought this was ridiculous.  But thinking about the work New Zealand economists do, I think there are a lot of ‘sexy economists’ ~ Anonymous

I’ll be honest, I’m impressed with the list of economists we ended up with from nominations.  Looking through the list of people who got into the final twenty, and those who missed out, I see a series of names of people who’s work I enjoy.  Sure there are a lot of other economists I’d love to see represented but opportunity cost right!

The poll

Here is the poll.  The top 20 were selected via the quantity of nominations they received.  We had 51 economists nominated, which was pretty exciting!  A lot of the nominations were from other economists, and people were incredibly supportive of the quality of each others work when nominating.  Compared to the partisan ego fights we all publicly see on US and UK economics blogs, this shows that the economics community in New Zealand is incredibly warm and excited by good work.

To help you make an informed decision, below the poll is a profile section.  I am sure that after reading the profile section you will want to vote for all twenty of the candidates, and so below that I’ve included a gallery because … why not!

Who is New Zealand's sexiest economist?

  • Marie Marconnet (27%, 273 Votes)
  • Özer Karagedikli (16%, 158 Votes)
  • Geoff Cooper (15%, 150 Votes)
  • Zoe Wallis (12%, 125 Votes)
  • Jane Turner (4%, 43 Votes)
  • Vladimir Petkov (4%, 38 Votes)
  • Chris Green (3%, 30 Votes)
  • Kevin Fox (2%, 25 Votes)
  • Paul Conway (2%, 23 Votes)
  • Steve Stillman (2%, 19 Votes)
  • Andrew Coleman (2%, 19 Votes)
  • Sharon Zollner (2%, 18 Votes)
  • Jean-Pierre de Raad (2%, 17 Votes)
  • Adolf Stroombergen (2%, 16 Votes)
  • John Gibson (1%, 13 Votes)
  • Gareth Kiernan (1%, 9 Votes)
  • Darren Gibbs (1%, 8 Votes)
  • Dominick Stephens (1%, 7 Votes)
  • Jacques Poot (1%, 6 Votes)
  • Nick Tuffley (1%, 6 Votes)

Total Voters: 1,003

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The poll will run until midnight on Saturday March the 1st.

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Matt Nolan

New Zealand’s sexiest economist 2014: Nominations open

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NOTE:  Nominations are now closed

Last year I learnt a very important lesson – I am not the only person that thinks that the study and application of economics is sexy.  The sexiest economist competition led to a lot of discussion, a deserved winner (don’t let me forget to pass on a trophy at some point), and two comments I heard repeatedly for the rest of the year:

  1. Are you going to do this again next year so I can vote for X.
  2. Where is this person Y I really wanted to vote for – specifically mentioning the lack of female contestants.

I had no intention of doing a 2014 version of this competition, but I’m also vulnerable to peer pressure, so here we go again!

However, things will be a bit different this time.  I am asking for your nominations for New Zealand’s sexiest (public facing) economist – you are allowed to nominate multiple economists.  Details are below the flap.

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Matt Nolan

New Zealand’s sexiest economist for 2013 is …

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As we all know there are few things sexier than economics.  And it seems this applies to New Zealand economists as well with a massive 407 votes cast in the “New Zealand’s sexiest economist poll”.  This was especially impressive as voting was via IP address, meaning that many large organisation could only cast one vote.  This turnout heavily exceeded my initial estimate of 6 votes – implying that not only did my vote model fail to pick the Global Financial Crisis, or the value of the New Zealand, it also failed to actually estimate the number of votes the poll would receive.

After frantic voting the champion was … Darren Gibbs with 97 votes (24%)

Darren Gibbs – Deutsche Bank

Darren Gibbs – Deutsche Bank

This was an impressive performance, and no doubt shows the depth of appreciation for both Darren’s looks and his application of economic ideas and concepts.

In second place was Donna Purdue with 91 votes (21%).  She receive wide ranging support from the economist and non-economist community, and was constantly threatening for first place.

Eric Crampton (3rd place) and Gareth Kiernan (5th place) made an early run during the first day of voting, however both fell off the pace as the voting went on.  Shamubeel Eaqub lived up to his reputation as a dark horse, pulling in a number of votes on the final day to take out 4th spot!

Shamubeel and Jean-Pierre de Raad may feel aggrieved, as by putting down two members of NZIER I was splitting the NZIER vote (BNZ has a similar claim) – however, I would note that the combined NZIER vote still would have had them significantly off the pace set by Darren and Donna.

All in all, congrats to Darren, it was good to see that everyone received some votes, and economics was the winner on the day.