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Nobel Prize in Economics Awarded to Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond, Philip Dybvig

nobelprize.org

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Re: Nobel Prize in Economics Awarded to Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond, Philip Dybvig

#71

Post by spaetzleesser »

polymathemagics wrote: post #64

Reading these comments make me feel sad about the state of Hacker News. As with any large public forum, it's turning into an anti intellectual space where takes like "economics is not a science, it's a social science!" are the best we have to offer. It's either engineer syndrome, or it's brigading from other niche political forums. I'm tired of reading knee jerk reactions to fields from commenters that have zero expe…

To me as outsider economics often seems more like an ideology vs reproducible science. As far as Bernanke goes none of his work helped him to recognize a monstrous real estate bubble that was building. And when it popped all he could come up with was to shovel money to the banks and wealthy people. What was his work good for?

Re: Nobel Prize in Economics Awarded to Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond, Philip Dybvig

#72

Post by kiba »

VictorPath wrote: post #68
polymathemagics wrote: post #64

Reading these comments make me feel sad about the state of Hacker News. As with any large public forum, it's turning into an anti intellectual space where takes like "economics is not a science, it's a social science!" are the best we have to offer. It's either engineer syndrome, or it's brigading from other niche political forums. I'm tired of reading knee jerk reactions to fields from commenters that have zero expe…

> turning into an anti intellectual space where takes like "economics is not a science, it's a social science!" are the best we have to offer A bank taking an endowment awarding a prize and money to physicists, chemists and biologists, and ramming in to it a prize for economists saying nonsense the bankers like to hear, is the definition of anti-intellectual. The physicists, chemists and biologists are the intellectu…

Neither of these intellectuals and scientists are any good for doing economics, precisely because they are on a wrong level of abstraction.

Re: Nobel Prize in Economics Awarded to Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond, Philip Dybvig

#73

Post by yobbo »

kiba wrote: post #72
VictorPath wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> turning into an anti intellectual space where takes like "economics is not a science, it's a social science!" are the best we have to offer A bank taking an endowment awarding a prize and money to physicists, chemists and biologists, and ramming in to it a prize for economists saying nonsense the bankers like to hear, is the definition of anti-intellectual. The physicists, chemists and biologists are the intellectu…

Neither of these intellectuals and scientists are any good for doing economics, precisely because they are on a wrong level of abstraction.

How does one evaluate the work of an economist - repeatably and independently?

Re: Nobel Prize in Economics Awarded to Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond, Philip Dybvig

#75

Post by hnburnsy »

raspberry1337 wrote: post #27

Economics is not a science. Most papers in finance/economics are not repeatable or even applicable in real life - as was displayed when the worlds number one hedgefund started the process of reading published financial papers and trying to apply them [1] [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43889703-the-man-who-sol...

"Economists are people who wonder if what works in reality can also work in theory."

- Ronald Reagan

Re: Nobel Prize in Economics Awarded to Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond, Philip Dybvig

#76

Post by riskneutral »

em500 wrote: post #20
belter wrote: post #4

It's the "Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences", and it's Bernanke prize for his work before, after or during the crisis? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Econom... "Bernanke Admits Fed Made Mistakes Combating Crisis 10 Years Ago" "...Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged that policy makers made two critical errors fighting the financial crisis a decade ago: They failed t…

First, if you want to be pedantic it's actually the "Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel". But nobody cares about about formal names if they're unwieldy[1]. Second, the comittee based the award on academic works from the 1980s. For Bernanke, that would be mostly his AER papers [2,3,4,5]. (The AER is one of the top journals in economics and 2 or 3 publications will probably get you a…

Let's not pretend that his role as Fed chairman during the greatest financial crisis in generations didn't have any influence on this decision.

Re: Nobel Prize in Economics Awarded to Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond, Philip Dybvig

#77

Post by AnimalMuppet »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #49
sbelskie wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about his 1980s work on bank runs and the Great Depression do you find so objectionable?

His works was useless in recognizing the 2008 bubble. He may have written some nice papers but when he was in charge he failed completely. He is simply not a good economist and his work didn't help with making good decisions.

He failed at seeing it coming. Once it came, he did really well at damage control. That's not as good as preventing the crisis in the first place, but it's far more than nothing.

Re: Nobel Prize in Economics Awarded to Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond, Philip Dybvig

#78

Post by AnimalMuppet »

dmichulke wrote: post #42
dereg wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bernanke has his fingerprints on every large central banks' response in the wake of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. He flooded the system with liquidity to prevent what he observed in the Great Depression. Was he successful? Yes. We didn't suffer from a recession anywhere near the magnitude of the depression. Did you like how he did it and what happened as a result? I'm guessing you didn't.[1] Part of the fun of ec…

> Was he successful? Yes. We didn't suffer from a recession anywhere near the magnitude of the depression. So he diagnosed the problem, set the goal (avoid recession), and the time frame (no immediate recession) and judged his success (no recession so yesss!). Sounds a bit arbitrary to me, especially as now it becomes evident even to his disciples (Yellen, Kashkari, Powell) that the thing was merely postponed and agg…

Given that the alternative was immediate recession (or worse, immediate collapse), a recession 14 years later is a win.

And, aggravated? You think the recession now is worse than what we would have had in 2008? I'm pretty sure you don't remember 2008 very accurately. Bernanke short-circuited a hurricane then, and you're complaining that it spawned a tornado 14 years later. Yes, the tornado is damaging. No, it's nothing like the hurricane.

Re: Nobel Prize in Economics Awarded to Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond, Philip Dybvig

#79

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Lionga wrote: post #58
jonnybgood wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the Fed didn’t respond the way it did? What would of happened? And what were the alternatives?

A small recession then instead of a big one now.

You think the recession now is bigger than what we would have had in 2008, without intervention at that time? I suspect that your memory fails you as to what 2008 was like.

Re: Nobel Prize in Economics Awarded to Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond, Philip Dybvig

#80

Post by spaetzleesser »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #77
spaetzleesser wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His works was useless in recognizing the 2008 bubble. He may have written some nice papers but when he was in charge he failed completely. He is simply not a good economist and his work didn't help with making good decisions.

He failed at seeing it coming. Once it came, he did really well at damage control. That's not as good as preventing the crisis in the first place, but it's far more than nothing.

It's certainly not Noble Prize level.
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