[PEN-L:6681] help on background on "nobel" prize in econ.

[DOUG ORR <DORR@xxxxxxx>]

   Each year about this time there is a discussion on the "lists" about
who won the "nobel" prize in econ., altho this year the topic hasn't come
up yet on PEN-L.  It is also the case that almost ever fall, we have a
discussion about the origin of the Econ prize.  This year, I posted the msg
below to FEMECON-L when the topic first came up.

  I have now received a request to print something about the origin of the
Econ prize in the IAFFE newsletter.  Before I send something off to "print"
I want to double check some issues.

1)  does someone know the source for the quote describing the prize that is
    included below.  I took it from an part of the PEN-L discussion in 1993.

2)  does anyone know a source to document that A. Nobel did not consider
    Econ. a science.  I have heard and read it many times, but I would like
    a more solid cite.

3)  when were the original Nobel prizes created?

4)  any other background that someone thinks is important.


I am hoping Trond is still lurking and can help out on this.  Trond??

_____________________________
Every Fall I get to send out the same msg because there are always new members
of the list.

The is NO Nobel prize in economics.  When Alfred Nobel set up his prizes to
reward scientific excellence he SPECIFICALLY declined to create a prize for
economics because he believed "economics is not a science, it is an ideology."
He endowed the Nobel prizes with part of the fortune he had acquired from his
invention of dynamite.  The prizes were meant to assuage part of the guilt he
felt the the destructive uses to which his invention had been put, especially
as weapons of war.

The "Nobel prize in economics" as the media, in its ignorance calls it was
created by, and funded by the Bank of Sweden:

"The Bank of Sweden, at its tercentanary in 1968, instituted the Bank of
Sweden Prize in Economic Science in Memory of Alfred Nobel, pledging an
annual amount equal to one of the regular Nobel Prizes. The winner of the
Prize...is to be chosen each year by the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences."

Notice1:  it is a prize in Memory of Alfred Nobel, not a Nobel prize.  For the
first few years, the Nobel committee would issue a statement trying to
clarify that the two are completely different things.  But the media refused
to change the way the reported the prize, so the Committee gave up.

Notice2:  No nobel prize in physics, chemistry, biology, etc. has ever been
given to someone whose work was later shown to be simply wrong.  However, this
has occurred several times in economics, with the most famous case being the
prize to Milton Friedman for the theory of monetarism, i.e. only money causes
inflation and money always causes inflation, which was shown to be
wrong in the 1980s

The Bank of Sweden prize in economics is simply a stamp of ideological
approval for particular economic theories that serve the interests of the
elite in capitalist societies.  Thus, it is not likely we will ever see
this prize given to anyone who is engaged in feminist economics!!

Doug Orr
dorr@xxxxxxx