Recently 64 Nobel Prize winners portraits / photos were unveiled in our university. It was a momentous occasion for any student in economics-serious or otherwise. Like gods and goddesses at puja room, they might give some strength and support to read economics, someone observed. It was also optimistically felt that some great scholar would emerge in this part of the region. A good pep talk to motivate students and faculty to read economics with interest.
For me, personally Paul Krugman winning the Nobel prize last year was the greatest moment of joy and sense of fulfillment ; in equal measure , I would say that Mrs. Joan Robinson not getting that honor was a serious slap on the committee itself. Being ordinary humans, we can only lament. I articulated y emotive feelings in my blog last year.
Though not a Nobel laureate she was a symbol of terror to other fellow economists. Once in a casual chat in the class or some platform Joan Robinson asked a question to Prof. Samuelson (late) “what do you keep constant, when you measure marginal product of labour?” to which our beloved and highly revered Samuelson , a great economist did not give any simple or straight reply, but bought some time to reply the next day, thinking that she had some tricky part in that question. If such is the case for Samuelson, where are we? I mused once in my class room lecture.
There was always class and quality in intellectual exchange among top ranking economists. The last few decades have produced wonderful economists all of whom could not enter into noble race for obvious reasons.
Going back to the theme, on that day while speakers were showering praise on economics , one faculty alone was talking in a dissenting voice despite the fact that he too belonged to Economics discipline, It was not an appropriate occasion to talk about the dearth of economics. Perhaps none of the speakers were aware of the dearth o good economists who could be given Nobel Prize now. The prestigious Hindu Business Line from Chennai drew attention to this, very recently. I will come to that later.
A casual survey of Economists winning the Nobel would show that until recently, with a few exceptions , the prize has gone to those who have glorified the market and argued for a typical neo- classical belief in the deregulated economic and financial system summed up in one slogan: Trust the Market. Further more, the process of mathematization of the subject in pursuit of making it as natural science has merited more attention from the committee rather the political economy content and sociology of economics. Many economists trained in Chicago school tradition and Rational Expectation Hypothesis, got the recognition.
Looked at the issue from this perspective, 2009 prize to Elinor Ostrom (first woman winner) and Oliver Williamson marks a welcome paradigm shift in awarding Nobel Prize in Economics.
These two economists argued that institutional arrangements are very much important in economic analysis and that markets cannot be trusted as they are not always the best. The fact that market is not fair or efficient and that it can go grossly irrational and go erratic , as was very much evident during the recent global financial crisis which has made the arrogance of economics as also those monetarists and Rational Expectation lovers more humbled, as they failed to put many behavioral components in mathematical models.
The Hindu Business Line Editorial while commenting on the fate of both Economics and Nobel prize asked a pertinent question “modern economics with its ersatz proofs conferred in mathematics and its econometric fetishes, has not economics noble prize has run its course now”. While arguing that being as social science, economics cannot just pretend to become a physical science , the Hindu Business Line gave a lengthy discourse that that time has come to remember the old guards and give Nobel to them posthumously , as their contribution had more analytical perspectives for uplifting human race .
To quote; "Economists will disagree, but the time may have come to change the periodicity of the prize from annually to twice in a decade so that the committee does not end up awarding a million dollars merely because t it has them and someone has to be given it . There simply isn’t enough meaningful economic research going on to merit an annual award . If this is not possible , the prize in the remaining eight years of a decade -2010 is a good starting point –can be given posthumously to economists such as Alfred Marshal , John Maynard Keynes and Joan Robinson ,not to mention David Ricardo , William Jevons ,Leon Walras , Antoine Cournot, Robert Malthus , Fredric Bastiat , Eugene Bohm-Bowark and why, even Karl Marx , whose analysis wasn’t very far from that of Eliner Ostrom .The backlist will serve till 2020 at least , and better still , the money can be given over to a charity that manages common properties in their names. Whatever the method of change adopted, the current farce must stop. "
For me, personally Paul Krugman winning the Nobel prize last year was the greatest moment of joy and sense of fulfillment ; in equal measure , I would say that Mrs. Joan Robinson not getting that honor was a serious slap on the committee itself. Being ordinary humans, we can only lament. I articulated y emotive feelings in my blog last year.
Though not a Nobel laureate she was a symbol of terror to other fellow economists. Once in a casual chat in the class or some platform Joan Robinson asked a question to Prof. Samuelson (late) “what do you keep constant, when you measure marginal product of labour?” to which our beloved and highly revered Samuelson , a great economist did not give any simple or straight reply, but bought some time to reply the next day, thinking that she had some tricky part in that question. If such is the case for Samuelson, where are we? I mused once in my class room lecture.
There was always class and quality in intellectual exchange among top ranking economists. The last few decades have produced wonderful economists all of whom could not enter into noble race for obvious reasons.
Going back to the theme, on that day while speakers were showering praise on economics , one faculty alone was talking in a dissenting voice despite the fact that he too belonged to Economics discipline, It was not an appropriate occasion to talk about the dearth of economics. Perhaps none of the speakers were aware of the dearth o good economists who could be given Nobel Prize now. The prestigious Hindu Business Line from Chennai drew attention to this, very recently. I will come to that later.
A casual survey of Economists winning the Nobel would show that until recently, with a few exceptions , the prize has gone to those who have glorified the market and argued for a typical neo- classical belief in the deregulated economic and financial system summed up in one slogan: Trust the Market. Further more, the process of mathematization of the subject in pursuit of making it as natural science has merited more attention from the committee rather the political economy content and sociology of economics. Many economists trained in Chicago school tradition and Rational Expectation Hypothesis, got the recognition.
Looked at the issue from this perspective, 2009 prize to Elinor Ostrom (first woman winner) and Oliver Williamson marks a welcome paradigm shift in awarding Nobel Prize in Economics.
These two economists argued that institutional arrangements are very much important in economic analysis and that markets cannot be trusted as they are not always the best. The fact that market is not fair or efficient and that it can go grossly irrational and go erratic , as was very much evident during the recent global financial crisis which has made the arrogance of economics as also those monetarists and Rational Expectation lovers more humbled, as they failed to put many behavioral components in mathematical models.
The Hindu Business Line Editorial while commenting on the fate of both Economics and Nobel prize asked a pertinent question “modern economics with its ersatz proofs conferred in mathematics and its econometric fetishes, has not economics noble prize has run its course now”. While arguing that being as social science, economics cannot just pretend to become a physical science , the Hindu Business Line gave a lengthy discourse that that time has come to remember the old guards and give Nobel to them posthumously , as their contribution had more analytical perspectives for uplifting human race .
To quote; "Economists will disagree, but the time may have come to change the periodicity of the prize from annually to twice in a decade so that the committee does not end up awarding a million dollars merely because t it has them and someone has to be given it . There simply isn’t enough meaningful economic research going on to merit an annual award . If this is not possible , the prize in the remaining eight years of a decade -2010 is a good starting point –can be given posthumously to economists such as Alfred Marshal , John Maynard Keynes and Joan Robinson ,not to mention David Ricardo , William Jevons ,Leon Walras , Antoine Cournot, Robert Malthus , Fredric Bastiat , Eugene Bohm-Bowark and why, even Karl Marx , whose analysis wasn’t very far from that of Eliner Ostrom .The backlist will serve till 2020 at least , and better still , the money can be given over to a charity that manages common properties in their names. Whatever the method of change adopted, the current farce must stop. "
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