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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

#211

Post by BurningFrog »

cassepipe wrote: post #191
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.

On the one hand my common sense wants to say of course, the more you transform a natural resource into something complex and desirable, the more value you create so yes all this wealth is the product of industrialism but on the other hand... all those natural resources had to come from somewhere no ? It would seem to me that colonialism was an essential part in this wealth creation even if the whole enterprise of get…

Natural resources are much less important for prosperity than people think.

I won't write an essay about it, but note that (1) Russia and Africa both have enormous natural resources and are very poor, and (2) Hong Kong and Singapore have no natural resources and are very rich.

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

#212

Post by oa335 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #202
I-M-S wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't natural resources wealth? Isn't forced work wealth? "Stealing" seems like the best word to describe the situation without obfuscating the matter with grander narratives (the kind that might win you the "Nobel prize" for economy, incidentally).

You're implying that the colonial powers got rich by taking natural resources from Africa and forcing Africans to work without pay. Since you don't offer any evidence for this scenario, I can't really refute it :) But note that 90% of Africa didn't even get colonized before 1884. That was over a century into the Industrial Revolution era, during which Western Europe had roughly doubled it's population and tripled the…

> You're implying that the colonial powers got rich by taking natural resources from Africa and forcing Africans to work without pay.

I don't interpret the OP comment as restricted to Africa - e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encomienda in Spanish colonies.

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

#213

Post by andrepd »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #104
andrepd wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no "consensus" in economics, let alone.

Of course, there is consensus in economics. It's a field which is mostly interested in models and anyone can agree that a model is consistant and implies surprising things even if they think the hypotheses it makes don't faithfully represent reality. It's endlessly fascinating to me how some people will happily disparage economics while having very little idea of what it's actually about.

How is making a factual assertion (there is no conseusus in the discipline of economics) somehow "disparaging economics"???? There is no consensus, unlike harder sciences such as physics or biology, and like social sciences such as sociology or anthropology. Because economics is the latter and not the former.

And please do me the favour of not assuming I "have very little idea of what it's actually about". It's contrary to the site guidelines (and it's very annoying).

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

#214

Post by oa335 »

astrange wrote: post #177
oa335 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Acemoglu (last year's prize) has some. Circumstancial evidence includes: 1. Having natural resources is often bad for development: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse 2. Scotland is in the UK because it tried to do colonialism, bankrupted itself and had to sell itself to England. 2. Ireland and Finland are doing as well as any other European country but never colonized anyone and were themselves colonized. C…

Acemoglu has argued that colonialism helped develop European economies:

"Our hypothesis is that Atlantic trade—the opening of the sea routes to the New World, Africa, and Asia and the building of colonial empires—contributed to the process of West European growth between 1500 and 1850, not only through direct economic effects, but also indirectly by inducing fundamental institutional change."

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jrobinson/files/jr_AERAtla...

Where has he argued the opposite?

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

#215

Post by paganel »

1oooqooq wrote: post #170
paganel wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gary Becker famously did, a fellow Nobel laureate. Granted, I haven’t kept pace with the latest in economics, it could be that is has become all mathematicised by this point, which is par for the course for this dismal science.

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

#216

Post by belter »

atwrk wrote: post #206
belter wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not falsifiable because it is not a hypothesis but a framework for recognizing science. Rejecting Popper for that is like rejecting reasoning itself because you can’t run a control experiment on it...but then one turns into an economist...

> It is not falsifiable because it is not a hypothesis but a framework for recognizing science. And if the source of that framework is not (part of your definition of) science, how do we know whether that framework is true? That was sort of my point: Poppers criterion is nice, but only works for a small subset of (natural) science - and even there has to face criticism because it is simply too naive for many edge cas…

Popper’s rule is not falsifiable for the same reason a definition can’t define itself. Falsifiability judges claims, not the rules for judging claims. Mixing those levels is like asking whether the rules of chess can checkmate themselves.

In category theory terms, it’s a type error, applying a rule defined within a system to the meta-level that defines the system itself.

https://www.lesswrong.com/w/object-level-and-meta-level

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metatheory

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

#217

Post by 1oooqooq »

paganel wrote: post #215
1oooqooq wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Gary Becker famously did, a fellow Nobel laureate. Granted, I haven’t kept pace with the latest in economics, it could be that is has become all mathematicised by this point, which is par for the course for this dismal science.

*social science
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