Look -- I'm ignorant. I've admitted as much. Why not have a reasonable conversation about it instead of all the hand-waving and yelling?
As far as I'm concerned, I was making a blanket statement about Noble prizes in soft sciences and the humanities. It's a generalization. Probably wrong. Guess what? I still get to make it, and I still think it's funny. If you'd like to discuss it reasonably, I'm game.
I'm happy with waiting 20 or 30 years and seeing how Krugman's research does. Are you? Or do we have to settle this now for once and all?
Last I checked, economics is a field with a lot of opinions. How can you be so certain Krugman has such great ideas? Geesh. We're still debating Keynes and Smith, you have to admit there is some room for opinion here, right?
The awards committee cited papers Krugman'd written in 1979, 1981 and 1991 as the basis for their decision.
You can be certain Krugman had such great ideas because his work has been widely cited by other Economists and has been recognized through awards such as the Nobel.
That we're still debating Keynes and Smith only further indicates the far reaching impact of their work.
That we're still debating Keynes and Smith indicate that economics is not like physics -- it has a long way to go. We certainly didn't debate Newton for a century: it was too obvious he was correct. There is lots of room for opinion. QED
Basically: you are making a baldly partisan, political argument where none is appropriate. If you admit to not knowing enough to decide for yourself, the proper judge is not "history", but the experts on the committee who do know this stuff quite well.
* Strictly, not true. The economics prize wasn't endowed by Alfred Nobel, but added more recently using funds from the original trust. Or something to that effect.