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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

#161

Post by yard2010 »

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.

These are all people using made up words to throw shit on other people.

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

#162

Post by lanfeust6 »

thrance wrote: post #93
lanfeust6 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't see what point you're trying to make. Do you mean to claim that the Sveriges Riksbank is unbiased in who it chooses to give their price to? Unless you believe that 90% of economists come from the US (and the remaining 10% from the UK), you should take issue with this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_Memorial_Prize_l... > concensus in Economics That's what I was talking about . This "consensus…

> I don't see what point you're trying to make. Do you mean to claim that the Sveriges Riksbank is unbiased in who it chooses to give their price to?

I made no such claim. I don't take issue with that list: the US by far leads in number of high‐profile economic researchers, high publication output, large number of employed economists.

Just as Mathematics is still Mathematics in the rest of the world, the broad perspective on Economics is not meaningfully different in the rest of the world. Even if it originated in the anglo-sphere, it's global. That's the point I made.

> This "consensus" is completely made-up and propped up by, among others, the Sveriges Riksbank.

Leading Economists globally find consensus on all manner of policy issues. Many academic papers model the effects of tariffs on prices, welfare, and the consensus is that tariffs generally harm consumers. Surveys conducted on Economists show strong consensus there.

> because of course, as we all know, that's all there is besides Neoliberalism

It's not a long list. Even Social Democracy darlings of Europe are effectively just Liberal with a bit more spending. Incidentally, France is in deep trouble because of this. Their public spending as a % of GDP far exceeds peers.

> maybe start by Thomas Piketty's work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Piketty

Piketty is decidedly heterodox, and I've read Capital in the 21st Century, though not his latest which as I understand revisits much of the same. Wealth taxes have been tried in several countries including Austria, and promptly dropped. That's because they do not work well. It's difficult to implement and the returns just aren't good.

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

#163

Post by belter »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #148
belter wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physics can test those hypotheses under controlled conditions...

> Physics can test those hypotheses under controlled conditions I genuinely have no idea why so many commenters on HN will spout nonsense based on high school curriculum with the confidence of a PhD when it comes to economics, but won’t embarrass themselves in other fields. Yes, economics—particularly microeconomics—is constantly subject to experimentation. Macroeconomics is closer to astronomy, in that models are de…

That comparison collapses instantly. Physics has invariants...Economics does not. You can’t rerun the economy under controlled conditions, so “experiments” are mostly natural or quasi experiments...statistical patchwork with fragile assumptions.

Macroeconomics isn’t like astronomy :-) Stars don’t change behavior when you model them. Economies do. There are no stable primitives, no conservation laws, just shifting behavior and feedback loops.

DSGE models are equilibrium sandcastles calibrated to past data. In physics that’s failure while in macro it’s tenure.

Economics is interesting and sometimes useful but calling it an experimental science is self-flattery.

  “One thing we are not going to have, now or ever, is a set  of models that forecasts sudden falls in the value of financial assets.”

   -- Robert E. Lucas

 "As a policy-maker during the crisis, I found the available models of limited help. In fact, I would go further: in the face of the crisis, we felt abandoned by conventional tools."

   -- Jean-Claude Trichet - https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2010/html/sp101118.en.html

 "How Conventional Wisdom Failed Us" - https://youtu.be/c8LMWCko4d0?t=138

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

#164

Post by nibles_and_bits »

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.

Really we don’t care.

My point was speak for yourself, the history does not suggest you are correct. Evidence economists do care[1][2][3]. Economics was still a relatively newer niche discipline[4].

[1] https://developingeconomics.org/2024/10/22/the-nobel-illusio...

[2] https://ideas.repec.org/b/pup/pbooks/10841.html

[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/10/nobel-priz...

[4] https://cooperative-individualism.org/parrish-john_rise-of-e...

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

#165

Post by yard2010 »

belter wrote: post #78
IAmBroom wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When models fail, economists adjust assumptions ... When models fail, physicist adjust hypotheses ...

Physics can test those hypotheses under controlled conditions...

Ha. Controlled conditions.

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

#166

Post by [deleted] »

belter wrote: post #163
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Physics can test those hypotheses under controlled conditions I genuinely have no idea why so many commenters on HN will spout nonsense based on high school curriculum with the confidence of a PhD when it comes to economics, but won’t embarrass themselves in other fields. Yes, economics—particularly microeconomics—is constantly subject to experimentation. Macroeconomics is closer to astronomy, in that models are de…

That comparison collapses instantly. Physics has invariants...Economics does not. You can’t rerun the economy under controlled conditions, so “experiments” are mostly natural or quasi experiments...statistical patchwork with fragile assumptions. Macroeconomics isn’t like astronomy :-) Stars don’t change behavior when you model them. Economies do. There are no stable primitives, no conservation laws, just shifting beh…

[deleted]

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

#167

Post by mediaman »

Perz1val wrote: post #106
hearsathought wrote: post #101

Why not just Economics. Why do they have to play games with everyone by adding "science" to everything? Economic "Sciences" is just as absurd as Creation "Science".

"Just economics" would go to the best businessman, no?

This is terribly confused.

Economics is the study of scarcity. Scarcity comes in many forms: land, attention, materials, time. (It is not the study of money, which is a common belief of those who have not thought about what money is. Money is merely a fungible token claim on resources, not the resource itself.)

You could also believe that the study of physics is just the study of business, because businessmen operate in a world governed by physics.

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

#168

Post by HSO »

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.

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

Since you stand by your statement so strongly, you should have it already, correct?

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

#169

Post by oa335 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #107
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…

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.

> 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.

I haven't heard this before, do you have sources where I could learn more?

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

#170

Post by 1oooqooq »

paganel wrote: post #116
IAmBroom wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claiming "access to healthcare" is capital is a novel idea. It's a social infrastructure. It doesn't directly lead to production, any more than lunch breaks do. Capital is not simply "anything that I can tie to improving my work output".

If you view the humans actually producing stuff as human capital, which many economists have done, then keeping that (human) capital in decent enough form by allowing it to have access to decent enough healthcare is a logical step forward. We could then go a step or two forward and posit that a sick populace means a sick consumer class means reduced demand for goods that generate growth, but those are just details.

nobody does. which is ironic since root for capital is latin for head count.
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