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It is October, which in the geeky world of academic economics means it is Nobel Prize month, or actually in the case of the economics field, Sveriges-Riksbank-Prize-in-Economic–Sciences-in-Memory-of-Alfred-Nobel month. The prizes start getting announced next week, and as is the custom for this time of year, speculation has started about who will get them.

Thomson Reuters, using academic citations, predicts Phillippe Aghion of Harvard University and Peter Howitt of Brown University will win the prize for work advancing thinking on the idea of “creative destruction.” Others names including William Baumol and Paul Romer of New York University, Jean Tirole of Toulouse School of Economics, and Robert Barro of Harvard are sure to make the rounds in the days ahead.

Purely in the name of being speculative and provocative, here’s another name that warrants some debate: Ben Bernanke.