David Weil

The work. The W in Mankiw-Romer-Weil, the 1992 paper that added human capital to the Solow model and found it explained most of the cross-country income gap. Later, the economics of health and growth, the use of satellite night lights as a proxy for GDP, and a widely used growth textbook.

The case for. Tol's model lists him seventh for growth. Mankiw-Romer-Weil is one of the most cited papers in macroeconomics and neither coauthor has a prize.

The case against. Growth was last year's prize. The committee has never rewarded the same field in consecutive years, and Tol's model ranks growth as the least likely of its four fields.

The KmikeyM angle. Mankiw-Romer-Weil says the thing the model was missing was human capital. KmikeyM is a company whose only asset is human capital, publicly priced.