Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 135 posts

Re: This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

#111

Post by jfengel »

kortilla wrote: post #36
jfengel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are exactly correct. RCTs are hard, not just for ethical reasons but also logistical ones. It's hard to get the money and authority to conduct an experiment in the first place, and it's often impossible to create a true control group. "Hard" scientists like to pat themselves on the back for rigor, but they get that because they're studying comparatively simple things. Studying the lives of people is hard, but it'…

> It's a bit like medicine: we're not going to stop treating people just because we don't understand the mechanism of action and can't guarantee that it will work. Yet medicine actually focuses on scientific measurement of effects. They don’t just throw their hands up and go, “experiments that affect people’s lives are too hard.”

Right, and that's what this is about. They're doing the experiments. I didn't say they were too hard; I said they were hard. But it's early days of learning how to do experiments, much like medicine was not that long ago.

Re: This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

#112

Post by sedeki »

_0ffh wrote: post #92

Yearly reminder that there is no Nobel Prize in Economics. It is the "Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences", established in 1968, to coattail on the prestige of the original. Edit: Your DVs don't change the facts.

They should have just named someone else. Now we have to qualify any sentence referencing the Economics price each time we say it.

Re: This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

#113

Post by sedeki »

duxut_staglatz wrote: post #10
ralph84 wrote: post #9

Worth noting that The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel is not an actual Nobel Prize. It was established by a central bank so they could award people who justify the existence of central banks.

Do you have any evidence that this was the reason why the prize was established?

I think the only ”evidence” there is, is that it was initiated about the same time the US got off the gold standard.

Re: This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

#114

Post by cyborgx7 »

Note: This article lazily does not make the distinction, but the "economics nobel prize" is not a real Nobel prize.

It was added years later, sponsored by a bank, and is officially called "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel". It exists purely to legitimize a neoliberal financial ideology and has nothing to do with scientific rigor.

Re: This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

#116

Post by elweston2 »

ummwhat wrote: post #110
jerf wrote: post #21

These critics should spend some time speaking to the medical research community. These aren't new questions. It kinda reveals the deep underlying assumptions; "of course we can know the results of these interventions in advance, so we must base our ethics on that"... ok, but if you already know the effects, why are you testing them? You're testing them because you don't know. Unfortunately, there's no royal road to s…

I think what you're missing is that economics has a serious case of physics envy. They like to imagine that their handful of reductionist principles can model a scenario as well as Newton's laws can model n bodies. The experiments are only needed to fine tune a handful of parameters. What is represented by this pivot towards emperical testing everything is a concession that there are no universal economic laws from w…

The problem with most economic models is they all work great. In the moment. Right up until it is 10 seconds later and something changed. Then they don't.

However, over time they have hidden variables that no one knows how to measure. Say to day you are in a bad mood. You go to a store pick up an item and go 'nah not going to buy that'. Then tomorrow you are in a good mood. You go to the same store and buy that item. Your neighbor does the same thing but does not buy it at all. Economics is very bad at figuring out what that even meant. But to know if handing people cash, or taxing more/less, or changing policies you kind of need to know what it did mean. Experimenting is a good idea which we have been doing for a long time. But the models still do not match.

The other issue is many of these things are huge systems (macro economics). You can change one little thing and it has an effect on 3 other things that you did not want. To use the classic micro economic model. The pizza joint. I raise my price because (MR=MC). I sell less pizzas but my profit is up. Profit does not come from nowhere. My customers paid more. So they can buy less of something else. I bought less items from my wholesalers so their profit is down. The gov gets more money because of taxes. One little change touched dozens of other stores/governments/people not even related to me. Getting that model right is tricky with thousands of hidden variables that more like functions.

Re: This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

#117

Post by cyborgx7 »

edoo wrote: post #66

They shouldn't worry too much. The economy Nobel was a fake political after addition to the real set of scientific prizes, along with peace prize.

Completely different cases. The peace prize existed since the beginning. The economic "Nobel prize" though was added after the fact by a Bank and should not be considered legitimate.

Re: This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

#118

Post by cik »

cyborgx7 wrote: post #114

Note: This article lazily does not make the distinction, but the "economics nobel prize" is not a real Nobel prize. It was added years later, sponsored by a bank, and is officially called "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel". It exists purely to legitimize a neoliberal financial ideology and has nothing to do with scientific rigor.

Outside of the financial press this doesn't get nearly the amount of attention it deserves.

Part of the (harsh) reality in the dislike of economics recently has been that the Behavioural Economics folks (yay Ariely!) have made it a point to start introducing experiment-based rigour and protocols. That part I find fascinating at least.

Re: This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

#119

Post by cyborgx7 »

sedeki wrote: post #112
_0ffh wrote: post #92

Yearly reminder that there is no Nobel Prize in Economics. It is the "Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences", established in 1968, to coattail on the prestige of the original. Edit: Your DVs don't change the facts.

They should have just named someone else. Now we have to qualify any sentence referencing the Economics price each time we say it.

>Now we have to qualify any sentence referencing the Economics price each time we say it.

They should have to do that, but they don't. Which is precisely the point, and why they didn't name it something else.

Re: This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

#120

Post by sedeki »

cyborgx7 wrote: post #119
sedeki wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should have just named someone else. Now we have to qualify any sentence referencing the Economics price each time we say it.

>Now we have to qualify any sentence referencing the Economics price each time we say it. They should have to do that, but they don't. Which is precisely the point, and why they didn't name it something else.

I think you are overestimating the intellect of Sweden’s central bankers.
Post reply on HN