by HAN FEIZI
If he dies without the prize in economics, the committee should just disband, having proven itself utterly irrelevant and inconsequential
Mama, put my guns in the ground
I can’t shoot them anymore
That long black cloud is comin’ down
I feel like I’m knockin’ on heaven’s doorbob Dylan, Nobel Laureate
British economist John Ross impishly told one interviewer that if the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences were honest, the Nobel Prize in Economics would have been awarded to Chinese economists every year for the past four decades.
Objectively, he has a point. China’s real GDP is 50 times what it was since reform and opening up began in 1978, far outpacing growth rates in Japan and the Asian Tigers (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong) during their miracle decades.
A 50x increase in GDP since 1978 for 1.4 billion people has certainly been more impactful than, say, a neat little math tool whose most primary use case is to match US and Canadian medical students with residency programs.
A 50x increase in GDP since 1978 for 1.4 billion people has certainly been more impactful than, say, the Black-Scholes option pricing model, which, while clever, wasn’t necessary for options markets. Laureates Myron Scholes and Robert Merton did manage to blow up mega hedge fund LTCM in 1998, just a year after winning their Nobel Prize, when interest rates failed to follow their model.
A 50x increase in GDP since 1978 for 1.4 billion people has certainly been more impactful than, say, a self-congratulatory political theory on Western institutions, a theory surely belied by China’s spectacular growth and the West’s long malaise.
John Ross is now not alone. Economist Adam Tooze of Columbia University has suggested that the Nobel Prize in Economics be given to Chinese policy makers because China’s growth has been the most profound economic story of our lifetime.
Some would argue that the Nobel Prize in economics is for academic researchers, not practitioners. A fair point, perhaps, if such a rule existed. But in fact, we are unaware of such a rule and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Swedish Academy have a long history of arbitrarily changing the scope and definition of Nobel Prizes. Artificial intelligence for physics? What? Bob Dylan for literature? Huh?
The Nobel Prize in Economics has always been the bastard child of the Nobel litter. Not among the original five prizes established by Alfred Nobel (Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Peace) upon his death in 1896, the economics prize was tacked on in 1969 by Sweden’s central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, as a “Prize in Economic Science dedicated to the memory of Alfred Nobel.”
Over the years, the Nobel Prize in economics has gone through 11 name changes from simplifying down to “Prize in Economic Science” to “Prize in Economic Science in Memory of Alfred Nobel” to “Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences” to today’s unwieldy “The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.”
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