TheAgitator.com
The Nobel for Dismalness
Thursday, October 16th, 2003Interesting, witty discussion on economics, economists and the Nobel Prize at the National Post. A few excerpts:
That’s something white-coated scientists always harp on when explaining to us social scientists why we aren’t real scientists: The things they discover stay discovered. But we economists keep changing our minds. You know: If you laid all the economists in the world end to end, they still wouldn’t reach a conclusion. (Or as a friend of mine says: If you laid all the economists in the world end to end, you should leave them there.)For instance, how in the space of five years could the Nobel Committee give prizes to both Milton Friedman (1976) and James Tobin (1981), monetary theorists with diametrically different views of how the U.S. Fed should conduct monetary policy? You wouldn’t see that in physics or medicine, would you?
…Of course, economics is a mainly non-experimental science. We can’t run the last quarter century over again a thousand times in the lab. So economists are doomed to disagree even on the extent of their own contribution to better economic performance. If only there were a Nobel Prize for irony.
I learned something from the link to this piece from AL Daily, too. I guess each year, the Nobel for economics switches between economists free market-oriented and those who aren’t.
that is great, i have always been interested in economics and it is so rare to read about the top bashing a major award… like the nobel prize…
I’m not an economist, but I write about economics for young kids. In that capacity I’ve worked with economists and have found that they suffer from a paralyzing fear of expressing themselves too clearly. :)
To be honest, I’m surprised the Nobel people *ever* give their prizes to free-market folk.
(BTW, nice to see you! I used to be a TAP columnist, too.)
“Of course, economics is a mainly non-experimental science”
Um, don’t be presumptuous. From what I can tell, economics isn’t a science at all.
raj, I think that economics is a science, the problem is that there are plenty of non-scientists dabbling in it. This causes more harm than good, and gives the discipline a bad name.
There are plenty of so-called economists spouting off opinions on this or that, but I always say:
“Opinions are noises made by people who don’t really know the facts.”
Given a proper analytical approach, anything can become a science based on fact or at least a very high degree of confidence (+/- small % of error).
Oh – it’s a science. So’s architecture, and there should be “crimes against humanity” trials for architects’ use of human experimentation.
The idea that “The things [physicists] discover stay discovered … But we economists keep changing our minds” is total nonsense. See Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” for a lenghthy refutation of this view.
The only ones who think economics isn’t a science are (1) people who don’t understand its subtlety, and (2) people who politically disagree with its conclusions.
The 2003 award to Granger and Engle was for econometric work that’s about as scientific as it gets. It vastly improved our understanding of trends in our economy over time. And that helps us improve the world going forward. I wouldn’t dismiss that too lightly.
I checked the link and didn’t see the part about the Nobel in economics alternating between free market and non-. But I had heard, for many years, that it alternated between American and European economists, since they didn’t want too many to go to Americans. That might produce roughly the same pattern as not wanting too many awards to go to free-marketers.
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