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The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025
- GolfPopper 1y ago"Unlike the Nobel Prizes for Medicine, Chemistry, Physics, Literature and Peace, which were created by Nobel in his 1896 will and first awarded in 1901, the Economics Prize was conceived by Sweden's central bank in 1968 to mark its tricentenary and first awarded a year later." https://web.archive.org/web/20071014012248/http://www.thelocal.se/2173/20050928/ https://web.archive.org/web/20071014012248/http://www.theloc...
- nabla9 1y agoHN discussions are predictable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45566804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45566804
- huhkerrf 1y agoOh, there's much more, even: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Nobel%20central%20bank&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- stuaxo 1y agoSure, but if they keep awarding this non Nobel prize with a deliberately confusing name people will keep bringing it up. The other solution would he some equivilent of a community note for it every year, it seems like things work as is though.
- lysace 1y agoI mentally place economic sciences sort of halvway between e.g. physics and social sciences on some imagined scientific rigidity scale. They seem rigid enough to be useful, but I hope they can be done better. Perhaps using better simulation tools.
- tovej 1y agoEconomics _is_ a social science, and a politicized one at that. Sociology is more rigid than economics when it comes to validation of theories and choice of methods (statistics vs. mathematical models filled with assumptions). Economics, especially neoclassical economics, has a serious problem in prediction quality, a physics theory would have been abandoned by now if it was so bad at predicting real-life phenomena as the neoclassical school of economics is.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- zwaps 1y agoDefine neoclassical economics beyond its use in the blogossphere
- tovej 1y agoIt's a school of economics that became dominant in the 60s, it emphasises free market dynamics, much like the classical school, and especially focuses on consumption and optimizing economic actors, these actors are a very simple (and unrealistic) model of consumers. They also neglect production as an aspect of the economy. Fun fact: The neoclassical economic school managed to remove the word "political" from "political economy" at the turn of the 20th century.
- username332211 1y agoIf sociology is so much more rigorous, why aren't sociologists invading the economic field? Surely they can use their rigorous statistics to produce papers on economic matters and put the entire field to shame? If anything, we're seeing the opposite results, where economists publish influential papers demographics, crime and social structure. "When dealing with humans, linear regression is going to be good enough" is a huge assumption to make.
- tovej 1y ago
- thrance 1y agoThe issue with this prize isn't that economics is not a real science. Nobel prizes are primarily vulgarization and communication tools, and as such are inhenrently political. The Sveriges Riksbank is piggy-backing off the popularity of Nobel Prizes to advocate for a certain vision (their vision) of economic orthodoxy. It is overwhelmingly awarded to white western men, who, more relevantly, all share an anglocentric neoliberalist vision of economics. This, I hope, we are allowed to take issue with. EDIT: apparently not. I would rather you explain to me why than downvote mindlessly.
- AtlasBarfed 1y agoWell you are on an anglo-centric neoliberalist imperialist site filled with people that are economic beneficiaries of that. Basic economic game theory that you'd be downvoted.
- lanfeust6 1y agoExtreme poverty rates have been plummeting precisely because East Asian countries became economic beneficiaries. The rest of the world operates on the same principles.
- underlipton 1y agoIt's a, "They hate him because they told the truth," situation. Frankly, it applies to the Peace Prize as well, but this one has an even more naked agenda. It would be a disservice not to mention its history every time it's brought up, because it is ever-salient to any discussion of the merit of the winners.
- lanfeust6 1y agoWhite western men are no more represented in Economics than other hard sciences, and concensus in Economics is no different in East Asia and the rest of the world excepting the authoritarian Socialist experiments.
- andrepd 1y agoThere's no "consensus" in economics, let alone.
- b00ty4breakfast 1y ago>This critique sets the stage for a more political debate. oh spare me. Social sciences are inherently political. They've always been political and they will always be political. Denying merely makes it worse. that's how you end up with the racialist anthropology of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Don't hang a picture of a dog turd on your front door and cry about all the people pointing it out.
- em500 1y agoI'll add the obligatory Dilbert take: https://verisoeconomica.wordpress.com/2022/10/10/the-2022-no https://verisoeconomica.wordpress.com/2022/10/10/the-2022-no... Sure, it's paid by the Swedish central bank instead of the Nobel foundation, and it wasn't established by Alfred Nobel himself. Nobody cares. Value of such awards depends entirely on peer recognition, not on who pays or what exact labels they carry. Selection for economics is done by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, like the other science awards.
- notahacker 1y agoYeah, "this isn't even a real prize, it wasn't selected at a time when it wasn't considered a distinct academic field by a benefactor concerned primarily about what his obituary might say" is even more tedious than pointing out that the Turing Award wasn't actually conceived by Alan. Much better arguments about issues with things individual Economic Nobel winners argued for than that...
- AtlasBarfed 1y agoHis descendants states that Nobel wouldn't have wanted a prize in his name. He didn't like economics because it is the science of greed. "Nobody cares" gotcha. Greed never cares.
- astrange 1y agoIt's the science of scarcity. Scarcity is the sort of thing that still exists if you don't believe in it. You could say it still believes in you.
- neilwilson 1y ago" it's paid by the Swedish central bank instead of the Nobel foundation" And those who pay the piper call the tune. Hence the brand of 'economics' that gets the gong.
- andrepd 1y agoWell, the thing is Economics is a very unique discipline. It's not quite a science but also not merely philosophy. Its object of study is affected by the study itself. It's very strange. That's why mutually exclusive economic theories have won the Nobel prize!
- belter 1y agoPredictable...but are those aholes wrong...? :-) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44013692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44013692 Economics violates Popper demarcation criterion. Economic theories can't be falsified because you can't run controlled experiments on economies, rewind history, or isolate variables. When models fail, economists adjust assumptions ... Unfalsifiable = Unscientific.
- rtsil 1y agoNeither are litterature and peace.
- atwrk 1y agoDo you think Poppers demarcation criterion is falsifiable?
- AnimalMuppet 1y agoNice use of recursion...
- belter 1y agoIt is not falsifiable because it is not a hypothesis but a framework for recognizing science. Rejecting Popper for that is like rejecting reasoning itself because you can’t run a control experiment on it...but then one turns into an economist...
- atwrk 1y ago
- HSO 1y ago[dead]
- moritz 1y agoAnd the story of how this came to be is absolutely wild. See Mirowski, Philip. 2020. “The Neoliberal Ersatz Nobel Prize”. Pp. 219-254 in Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, edited by Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian and Philip Mirowski. Verso. Fulltext: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/215796/1/Full-text-book-Plehwe-et-al-Nine-lives-of-neoliberalism.pdf https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/215796/1/Full-text-b...
- JCM9 1y ago[flagged]
- btown 1y agoMore detail on accomplishments in press release: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2025/press-release/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2025/pre... Press conference: https://www.youtube.com/live/EajZObplJ8U https://www.youtube.com/live/EajZObplJ8U https://www.reuters.com/world/mokyr-aghion-howitt-win-2025-nobel-economics-prize-2025-10-13/ https://www.reuters.com/world/mokyr-aghion-howitt-win-2025-n... - includes quotes from press conference, including commentary from laureates on present geopolitical climate
- jacquesm 1y agoThat's a tiny article, but it does contain an interesting passage: "for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress" which is the core of the reason the prize was awarded. I find it interesting to see technological progress so tightly coupled to sustained growth and I wonder if the implication is that growth will stop when technological progress stagnates. Is there any proof to that effect?
- thrance 1y agoAt first glance, "sustained growth" sounds like an oxymoron. Nothing can grow forever, unless the growth asymptotically approaches zero.
- nathan_douglas 1y agoThis page: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2025/press-release/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2025/pre... explains in more detail what they mean. It's a pretty clean and effective explanation. > Technology advances rapidly and affects us all, with new products and production methods replacing old ones in a never-ending cycle. This is the basis for sustained economic growth, which results in a better standard of living, health and quality of life for people around the globe. > However, this was not always the case. Quite the opposite – stagnation was the norm throughout most of human history. Despite important discoveries now and again, which sometimes led to improved living conditions and higher incomes, growth always eventually levelled off. ...
- fnord77 1y agoStagnation is environmentally sustainable. Constant creation-destruction cycles will ultimately deplete the environment
- lanfeust6 1y agoInnovation is such that efficiency increase requires fewer resources and land. Population growth is stagnating and will peak in less than 100 years. Neo-Malthusianism is as bunk as Malthusianism was
- huitzitziltzin 1y agoEconomist here… An unexpected (to me!) prize but definitely a good one. What’s notable is that mokyr’s research is very, very accessible to a layman. You can read his books and understand them nearly perfectly without needing substantial technical background. (Of course there’s a huge existing literature in economics and history he’s engaging with which you won’t know, but I’m not an economic historian either so a lot of it is unfamiliar to me too.). Try it! Hopefully you learn something. Also the committee always releases a good non-technical summary of the laureates work and an even better “more technical” summary. You can start there for an overview. As for the point which will be raised endlessly here that this is “not a real Nobel” - whatever. No one in the economics profession cares. Alfred Nobel doesn’t have a monopoly on prizes or priority to decide which fields are worth recognizing. It’s our highest prestige prize. Call it what you want.
- dkural 1y agoAgreed! I am a big fan of Robert Allen's books on the industrial revolution as a counterpoint to Mokyr. (The two are of course are friends with each other as well).
- trvz 1y ago[flagged]
- laborcontract 1y agoAre there any good papers floating out there?
- huitzitziltzin 1y agoSure… Mokyr’s northwestern website has links to a lot of his papers. An extremely crude selection rule: Anything published in the American economic review, quarterly journal of economics, journal of political economy has the profession’s “highest stamp of approval”. It’s really hard to publish anything there. (There are two journals im not listing in that “top” category but he has no papers there on his website.). On aghion or howitts websites, look for the above journals but also econometrica and the review of economic studies. Those are the “top five” in the field. There are surely papers in good history and Econ history journals on mokyr’s website but I don’t know the journals! Standards for any chapter in a “handbook of X economics” or “handbook of the economics of X” are high - those should be good surveys. Similarly a paper in the “annual review of economics” Also mokyr has a bunch of work on Amazon. “The lever of riches” is a classic. “A culture of growth” is well regarded. Finally he has a forthcoming book called “two paths to prosperity” with two other distinguished guys - one Econ historian (greif) and one political economy guy (tabellini). It’s coming out in about three weeks. Good timing, Princeton U Press! Aghion and howitt have a growth textbook at the advanced undergrad level called “the economics of growth.” They have a much more advanced work called “endogenous growth theory” which is for specialists (or at least anyone with first year PhD macro) Aghion has a book called “the power of creative destruction.”
- mallowdram 1y agoSustained growth, like "economic science", is an oxymoron. There is no science that correlates the use of arbitrary symbols posed as capital. Risk is risk, a primate bias. Economics is essentially "mathematical politics". We can no more create a science of economics than a science of mythology. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262049658/blunt-instrument/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262049658/blunt-instrument/ Downvoting only proves the point: economics is like any primate bias, it enforces status at the cost of the collective or institutional. The US is a sad case for economic "modeling."
- sethammons 1y agoA stable biome feels like sustained growth to me, via destruction and recycling. The jungle is always growing, even as plants die and rot. Maybe the word should be "activity" vs growth.
- mallowdram 1y agoOn a desertifying planet trapped in climate extinction, the jungle is only shrinking.
- sethammons 1y agoLook up reforestation work. It is a light in dark times.
- mallowdram 1y agoWe're inside the first animal created mass desertification project. Reforestation is nonsense. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SG8IGOzeF49Pbf8JZ-JWyzPq_nJCJ1VP/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=117811266689566925986&rtpof=true&sd=true https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SG8IGOzeF49Pbf8JZ-JWyzPq... We lose 10 million sq miles of forests a year and have lost 1/3 of forest areas since 1000Ad, so "reforesting" isn't a viable reversal project. And reforestation is poorly understood as "reforesting" is pursued on land already lost to forest capability. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59799-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59799-8 "Reforestation is a prominent climate change mitigation strategy, but available global maps of reforestation potential are widely criticized and highly variable, which limits their ability to provide robust estimates of both the locations and total area of opportunity"
- l5870uoo9y 1y agoWhat is the smallest fraction of a Nobel Prize that a winner can be awarded?
- nradov 1y ago⅓
- arjunnarayan 1y ago1/4. The max number of recipients of any prize is 3, but it can be split into a half, and then one of those halves into two further halves, for a 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/4 split. (It can also be split equally into 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3).
- Tycho 1y agoI was thinking about this concept of creative destruction recently. I move to my neighbourhood in 2019. Before I got round to visiting them, a bunch of pubs and eateries closed down for the pandemic, and never re-opened. One pub became new apartments. A cafe became some sort of spa. Take the pub for instance, I could imagine it was a lifestyle business for someone who made enough money from it, but not a whole lot. Is it net good or bad (for the area) for somewhere like that to close? Was this lifestyle business depriving the area of better services, more tax revenue? Or does the area now get less services and the money is mostly extracted into the coffers of a non-local property development enterprise. Quite hard to judge. Maybe there’s some good heuristics for estimating such things?
- stevenwoo 1y agoJust in case you missed it, last year's winners included it as one phenomena in their 2019 book, The Narrow Corridor, it's kind of like an interpretation of history through their particular lens.
- Maxion 1y agoA park will generate less revenue than an apartment building, a sports complex, or a cafe. Not all value is quantifiable in USD.
- IAmBroom 1y agoTycho didn't claim it was. In fact, they explicitly asked if such a heuristic existed.
- jlhawn 1y agothis isn't necessarily true. While it generates less direct revenue, it increases nearby land value in two ways: 1) business activity which would have taken place on that parcel "overflows" to nearby parcels, ie, the demand for those other land uses doesn't go away and increases prices in the surrounding area. 2) the park provides real value to its users and access to that value also increases nearby ground rents.
- ahmedfromtunis 1y agoThis seems like a continuation on the theme of last year's award. Very nice!
- melvinchus 1y ago[dead]
- immibis 1y agoThis isn't a Nobel pick even though the name contains the word Nobel.
- jcattle 1y agoI find macroeconomics fascinating. These theories to explain how growth works, what incentivizes it, where value comes from, I find them really fascinating. It kind of echoes a common theme with LLMs, of humans creating systems that somehow work and only afterwards trying to make sense of why they work. We know that transformers are good at capturing context, and gradient descent is good at arriving at a working model of that context but how exactly this knowledge is being distilled and stored in an embedding space, no exact clue. Is there some course which teaches the basics of macroeconomics?
- huitzitziltzin 1y agoYou can start with a used copy of an older edition of mankiw’s text which is a standard undergrad reference. Barro also has an old undergrad macro text which is good The gap between undergrad macro and professional macro is extremely large. That shouldn’t dissuade you it’s just a note.
- xbar 1y agoFantastic selection. As ever, it is worthwhile to be familiar with the winners' works, particularly this audience and this year.
- hearsathought 1y agoWhy not just Economics. Why do they have to play games with everyone by adding "science" to everything? Economic "Sciences" is just as absurd as Creation "Science".
- Perz1val 1y ago"Just economics" would go to the best businessman, no?
- hearsathought 1y agoIs this a real question? Businessmen are in the business of management. It's why businessmen tend to get MBAs. Whilest economists get degrees in economics.
- mediaman 1y agoThis is terribly confused. Economics is the study of scarcity. Scarcity comes in many forms: land, attention, materials, time. (It is not the study of money, which is a common belief of those who have not thought about what money is. Money is merely a fungible token claim on resources, not the resource itself.) You could also believe that the study of physics is just the study of business, because businessmen operate in a world governed by physics.
- btown 1y agoThere's actually a fair amount of drama around why this is! https://rwer.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/the-nobel-family-dissociates-itself-from-the-economics-prize/ https://rwer.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/the-nobel-family-disso... Apparently, when the Riksbank decided it wanted to publicly fund a prize for the category, the verbosity of the name of the prize was a concession to distance it from the other simply-named Nobel Prizes, funded by the family. > What was the position of the Nobel family? Three days before the meeting of April 26, the then director of the Nobel Foundation, Nils Ståhle, met two members of the family and telephonically talked with a third one. Their position was that “it should not become like a sixth Nobel Prize”, but that if the economics prize could be kept clearly separate from the Nobel Prizes then it might be an acceptable idea. > They obtained her written approval of the economics prize “under given conditions,” namely that the new prize in all official documents and statements should be kept separated from the Nobel prize, and called the “prize in economic science in memory of Alfred Nobel.” In a telephonic conversation with a nephew, Martha Nobel said that the whole thing was prearranged and impossible to oppose, so that one could only hope that they would keep their pledge that no confusion with the real Noble prize should occur. > What has happened is an unparalleled example of successful trademark infringement. However, nobody in the world can prevent journalists, economists and the general public from talking about the “Nobel prize in economics,” with all its connotations.
- ricksunny 1y agoThank you for not repeating the usual mistaken, and misleading, name for the prize "Nobel Prize in Economics" in the title. EDIT: Recognizing @huitzitziltzin 's comment, this factoid was originally imparted to me IRL 8 years ago by an economist, one Jackie Mallett of the Threadneedle banking simulation project (and who probably wouldn't mind my invoking her by name on this topic).