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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

#31

Post by rtsil »

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.

Neither are litterature and peace.

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

#32

Post by underlipton »

thrance wrote: post #9
nabla9 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

It's a, "They hate him because they told the truth," situation. Frankly, it applies to the Peace Prize as well, but this one has an even more naked agenda. It would be a disservice not to mention its history every time it's brought up, because it is ever-salient to any discussion of the merit of the winners.

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

#34

Post by Tycho »

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. Is it net good or bad (for the area) for somewhere like that to close? Was this lifestyle business depriving the area of better services, more tax revenue? Or does the area now get less services and the money is mostly extracted into the coffers of a non-local property development enterprise. Quite hard to judge. Maybe there’s some good heuristics for estimating such things?

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

#35

Post by lanfeust6 »

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.

The world/universe doesnt last forever either. That does not say much. Unless you have reason to believe technilogical innovation will end in a foreseeable future, growth will not be expected to end in that timeline

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

#36

Post by zwaps »

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…

Define neoclassical economics beyond its use in the blogossphere

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

#37

Post by lanfeust6 »

fnord77 wrote: post #22
nathan_douglas wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This page: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2025/pre... explains in more detail what they mean. It's a pretty clean and effective explanation. > Technology advances rapidly and affects us all, with new products and production methods replacing old ones in a never-ending cycle. This is the basis for sustained economic growth, which results in a better standard of living, health and quality of life f…

Stagnation is environmentally sustainable. Constant creation-destruction cycles will ultimately deplete the environment

Innovation is such that efficiency increase requires fewer resources and land. Population growth is stagnating and will peak in less than 100 years.

Neo-Malthusianism is as bunk as Malthusianism was

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

#39

Post by sethammons »

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…

A stable biome feels like sustained growth to me, via destruction and recycling. The jungle is always growing, even as plants die and rot.

Maybe the word should be "activity" vs growth.

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