2009 Ig Nobel economics prize co-winner Armann Thorvaldsson has written a book about his experience. Called Frozen Assets, it is 576 pages long. The publisher says:
Iceland truly lived the boom and bust. Once a tiny country on the edge of Europe, in less than two decades it became a global financial powerhouse.This is the story of how one man, one bank and one country experienced and affected the course of world economic history. Armann Thorvaldsson, a former CEO at Kaupthing in the UK, tells the story…. As the boom got bigger, the Icelandic bankers worked and played hard with their international clients, including Gordon Ramsay, the Candy brothers, Mike Ashley and Robert Tchenguiz. Moving from Reykjavik to London, Monte Carlo and St Tropez, they seemed unstoppable.
Yet, when the bust came, even the most frantic attempts to save the bank were fruitless, leading to the total collapse of the Icelandic economy. Thorvaldsson’s reflections on exactly what happened and why, make compelling reading.
Thorvaldsson and the other directors, executives, and auditors of four Icelandic banks won their Ig for demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and vice versa — and for demonstrating that similar things can be done to an entire national economy.