A Nobel Letdown in Economics   It's customary, when the Nobel
Prize in Economics is announced each year, for the members of
the economics profession to gather around and proclaim how
deserving the winners are and how important their research is to
the field. I have to say, however, that this year's Nobel Prize
in Economics, given to two game theorists, brings up mixed
feelings for me.  Since I'm a journalist with a PhD in
economics, I will go half the distance. I agree that Robert
Aumann and Thomas Schelling, this year's Nobel laureates,
deserve their awards. Schelling, in particular, wrote two of the
best economic books ever, The Strategy of Conflict and
Micromotives and Macrobehavior.  CONSISTENT WITH MANY OUTCOMES.
In my opinion, however, game theory represents an evolutionary
dead-end in the development of economics. Game theory tries to
use the principle of rationality to explain conflict and
cooperation in a wide range of economic and social situations.
For example, game theory has been used to analyze