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The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025

nobelprize.org

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Re: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025

#61

Post by IAmBroom »

thrance wrote: post #13
jacquesm wrote: post #10

That'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 proo…

At first glance, "sustained growth" sounds like an oxymoron. Nothing can grow forever, unless the growth asymptotically approaches zero.

Nothing about "sustained" implies "forever". Sustained notes at the symphony don't continue after the audience leaves.

Re: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025

#62

Post by IAmBroom »

Maxion wrote: post #59
Tycho wrote: post #34

I 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. I…

A park will generate less revenue than an apartment building, a sports complex, or a cafe. Not all value is quantifiable in USD.

Tycho didn't claim it was. In fact, they explicitly asked if such a heuristic existed.

Re: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025

#63

Post by arjunnarayan »

l5870uoo9y wrote: post #33

What is the smallest fraction of a Nobel Prize that a winner can be awarded?

1/4. 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).

Re: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025

#64

Post by [deleted] »

newyankee wrote: post #48
HSO wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a persistent mythology of western economic history to "cleanwash" the past and "explain" the present inequality (or what was the present until recently) Think about the components of all those innovations from the past and if they would have been possible (to scale) without violent and forcible extraction of resources from around the globe, incl forced labor. Think about when GDP was constructed and how, and…

May be progress is as simple as making energy very cheap, ensuring a diverse manufacturing capability with most efficient methods while making sure 1 or 2 inputs do not bottleneck you. Larger and bigger powers can control different parts of 'supply chain' (for lack of a better word) and make it difficult to progress without them getting a royalty. In their minds they are justified as they made progress first and othe…

[deleted]

Re: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025

#65

Post by twoodfin »

geysersam wrote: post #52
dkural wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is two contributors to growth: increase in population, and productivity gains. If tech adoption slows down and population slows down, we go back to the historical norm of no economic growth.

Productivity gains don't only come from technological progress. Accumulation of capital, such as infrastructure, education, access to healthcare etc, also increase productivity.

All healthcare beyond the village witch doctor was technological progress at one time.

Re: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025

#66

Post by lanfeust6 »

mallowdram wrote: post #20

Sustained 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/ Downvoting only proves the point: economics is like any primate bia…

The US has among the richest citizens in the world, with a high quality of life. You could do worse for modeling, like perhaps your socialist darlings.

Growth is not necessary but provides benefits. A country that grows improves its quality of life. Extreme poverty levels have been plumetting for decades because of said growth ( mostly represented in China and India). The poorest countries trade the least.

Economics today is mostly about data. For instance tariffs lead to worse outcomes for consumers; only populists like them. Or, compare housing affordability between areas with lax zoning or strict zoning. Just because data isn't gleaned from a physics experiment doesn't mean it isn't useful; more than likely you probably invoked social science research data to support a POV that wasn't a controlled experiment; was that all in fact nil in value? The facts don't matter, or rather, there are no facts and only ideology exists? That must be why communists twist themselves over "is" and "ought"

Re: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025

#67

Post by huitzitziltzin »

jcattle wrote: post #58

I 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 mode…

You 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.

Re: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025

#68

Post by lanfeust6 »

tovej wrote: post #24
lysace wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 a…

This is completely false. The opposite is true. Economics had drastically improved reproduction over decades.

Re: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025

#69

Post by lanfeust6 »

belter wrote: post #18
nabla9 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Predictable...but are those aholes wrong...? :-) 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.

Argentina managed to save itself from hyperinflation by drastically cutting spending. By your logic, this could not be in the least bit predictable and inflation as a phenomenon doesn't even matter.

Supposing it did was fairly predictable that not setting money on fire would help recovery, what does it matter that there is no controlled scientific experiment involved? Or to put it another way, are there no facts to be gleaned from data?

Re: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2025

#70

Post by lanfeust6 »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #29
thrance wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Extreme poverty rates have been plummeting precisely because East Asian countries became economic beneficiaries. The rest of the world operates on the same principles.
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