5 ms·

"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 Eco

"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 ago
HN discussions are predictable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45566804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45566804
- huhkerrf 1y ago
  Oh, 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 ago
  Sure, 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 ago
  I 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 ago
    Economics _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 ago
      Define neoclassical economics beyond its use in the blogossphere
      - tovej 1y ago
        It'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 ago
      If 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 ago
  The 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 ago
    Well 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 ago
      Extreme 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 ago
    It'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 ago
    White 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 ago
      There'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 ago
  I'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 ago
    Yeah, "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 ago
    His 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 ago
      It'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 ago
    Well, 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 ago
  Predictable...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 ago
    Neither are litterature and peace.
    - belter 1y ago
      They are not pretending to be sciences.
    - immibis 1y ago
      Or astrophysics (not a Nobel prize but obviously a real science despite being non-replicable).
  - atwrk 1y ago
    Do you think Poppers demarcation criterion is falsifiable?
    - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
      Nice use of recursion...
    - belter 1y ago
      It 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 ago
And 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...

nabla9 1y ago

HN discussions are predictable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45566804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45566804

huhkerrf 1y ago
Oh, 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 ago
Sure, 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 ago
I 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 ago
  Economics _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 ago
    Define neoclassical economics beyond its use in the blogossphere
    - tovej 1y ago
      It'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 ago
    If 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 ago
The 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 ago
  Well 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 ago
    Extreme 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 ago
  It'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 ago
  White 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 ago
    There'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 ago
I'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 ago
  Yeah, "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 ago
  His 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 ago
    It'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 ago
  Well, 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 ago
Predictable...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 ago
  Neither are litterature and peace.
  - belter 1y ago
    They are not pretending to be sciences.
  - immibis 1y ago
    Or astrophysics (not a Nobel prize but obviously a real science despite being non-replicable).
- atwrk 1y ago
  Do you think Poppers demarcation criterion is falsifiable?
  - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
    Nice use of recursion...
  - belter 1y ago
    It 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 ago

And 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...