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

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

#121

Post by moritz »

GolfPopper wrote: post #2

"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.theloc...

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-b...

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

#122

Post by huitzitziltzin »

laborcontract wrote: post #115
huitzitziltzin wrote: post #17

Economist 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 lo…

Are there any good papers floating out there?

Sure…

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.”

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

#123

Post by BurningFrog »

cess11 wrote: post #112
BurningFrog wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The west didn't get rich from colonizing the world. It got rich domestically through industrialism. Then the newly rich countries went on to colonize the world, because now they could. If and how much the colonies made them even richer is debatable, but it was probably a net cost on average. This is one of several insights counter to "common sense" that economists have figured out.

There are scientists that reach quite different conclusions from you. https://www.jasonhickel.org/research

Let me just add that the colonizing of the Americas in the 1500s was of course unrelated to industrialism emerging centuries later. Much of that was an accident of immunology.

Note that industrialized countries without colonial empires ended up at least as rich as the big European colonial powers.

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

#124

Post by huitzitziltzin »

nibles_and_bits wrote: post #120
huitzitziltzin wrote: post #17

Economist 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 lo…

No one in the economics profession cares. Another contradiction by a member of the economics profession. It seems to me they care very much. By linking the prize to Alfred Nobel’s name (and to the Nobel institutions), the Riksbank ensured the prize would immediately carry great symbolic prestige. The Nobel brand was already well established internationally, so adopting the name helped the economics prize gain recogni…

I stand by my statement.

I’d love an estimate from you (or anyone) about the marginal effect on the profession’s “legitimacy” (which is what? and how’s it measured?) from having the prize include Nobel’s name vs. not including it.

Really we don’t care.

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

#125

Post by bell-cot »

carlosjobim wrote: post #118
yobbo wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From an economist's perspective, energy is not typically recognised as a critical quantity. In so far as it is considered, it's thought of as an incidental property of some good or service being traded like oil or electricity. But technological progress can be understood as successively more sophisticated ways of capturing and directing energy from natural processes. Economic growth has always occurred downstream of…

> To achieve growth while also reducing energy use, efficiency must be increased proportionately through technology. And that's something which happens thousands of times per day all over the world in different businesses and in almost all human endeavour. We're constantly getting more and more utility out of the material and energy we use. So growth is both using more resources, as well as using them in better ways.

For reducing energy use, social values matter at least as much as technology. Imagine if we had no better technology - but most people drove small cars instead of large SUV's and trucks, and jet plane trips were not routine for hundreds of millions of people.

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

#126

Post by RandomLensman »

belter wrote: post #113
RandomLensman wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not always/limited in some areas (astrophysics come to mind where we, e.g., cannot (yet) create a star under controlled conditions). Testing hypotheses or predictions vs observations is also a valid method.

Science is not about where you test hypotheses, but how. Astrophysics builds falsifiable models and checks them against reality like spectra, gravitational waves, etc... When predictions fail, theories change. If these were economists, they would check if their equations match the economic universe they live in. :-) Instead, they conclude the agents just “did not behave rationally enough”.

Not about controlled conditions then necessarily.

Not really my experience with economics - a lot of awareness of reality vs model (regardless of how "beautiful" they are).

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

#127

Post by genericresponse »

belter wrote: post #113
RandomLensman wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not always/limited in some areas (astrophysics come to mind where we, e.g., cannot (yet) create a star under controlled conditions). Testing hypotheses or predictions vs observations is also a valid method.

Science is not about where you test hypotheses, but how. Astrophysics builds falsifiable models and checks them against reality like spectra, gravitational waves, etc... When predictions fail, theories change. If these were economists, they would check if their equations match the economic universe they live in. :-) Instead, they conclude the agents just “did not behave rationally enough”.

That's just not true. The models have real predictive power, they just have limitations. Behavioral economics, which tackles this frontier is still a growing field. Thaler, Kahneman, and Taversky won the prize in 2017 for building the bridge between economic theory and individual decision-making.

At the risk of being inflammatory-- These arguments are the equivalent of saying that Newton didn't really do physics because his models of mechanics break down at high enough speeds and small enough scales.

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

#128

Post by littlestymaar »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #124
nibles_and_bits wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one in the economics profession cares. Another contradiction by a member of the economics profession. It seems to me they care very much. By linking the prize to Alfred Nobel’s name (and to the Nobel institutions), the Riksbank ensured the prize would immediately carry great symbolic prestige. The Nobel brand was already well established internationally, so adopting the name helped the economics prize gain recogni…

I stand by my statement. I’d love an estimate from you (or anyone) about the marginal effect on the profession’s “legitimacy” (which is what? and how’s it measured?) from having the prize include Nobel’s name vs. not including it. Really we don’t care.

You care so little you spent time to claim you don't care twice in a row.

> I’d love an estimate from you (or anyone) about the marginal effect on the profession’s “legitimacy” (which is what? and how’s it measured?) from having the prize include Nobel’s name vs. not including it.

I don't have an estimate for that, but we have an estimate on how much money the Sverige Riskbank bankers were ready to spend in that effort. Maybe it didn't pan out but some people definitely had a multimillion dollar interest in making that happen. As an economist you must wonder what their incentives could have been …

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

#129

Post by littlestymaar »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #17

Economist 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 lo…

I'm not familiar with the two others but Aghion really isn't a surprise given the track record the Nobel committee for the econ prize has of following hype rather than anything else.

(I've been very critical of Aghion's work for the past few years since I've been exposed to his work over that period, but it always appeared to me as a potential laureate given the resonance of his work)

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

#130

Post by genericresponse »

lanfeust6 wrote: post #98
thrance wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argentina didn't manage shit, else they wouldn't have to be bailed out by the Trump admin. This should come as a surprise to no one, "General AnCap" may have artifically and temporarily given the impression of good numbers by destroying his country's public infrastructure, but this is at the direct cost of the future. Now they're starting to pay the price.

> Argentina didn't manage shit You're deflecting. Curtailing inflation was an outcome of policy. The U.S. had fuck-all to do with it. Unless you're willing to acknowledge something so basic there's nothing else to say to someone disinterested in good faith discussion

Ehh... you're both wrong. Argentina ended 2024 with an annual inflation rate close to 100%. That's significantly lower, but still hyperinflation. It should be lower this year, but how much is the question.

Whether that's maintainable long term is probably the decisive judgement. Argentina has had many cycles of hyperinflation, reset, hyperinflation again. The current bailout is not exactly a positive indicator.

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