There is No Nobel Prize in Economics

[MachineGhost]

What started as a project to help the Bank of Sweden achieve political independence, ended up boosting the credibility of the most regressive strains of free-market economics, and paving the way for widespread acceptance of libertarian ideology.

Take Hayek: Before he was won the award, it looked like Hayek was washed up. His prospect of ever being a mainstream economist was essentially over. He was considered a quack and fraud by contemporary economists, he had spent the 50s and 60s in academic obscurity, preaching the gospel of free-markets and economic darwinism while on the payroll of ultra-rightwing American billionaires. Hayek had powerful backers, but was stuck way out on the fringes of reactionary-right subculture.

But that all changed as soon as he won the prize in 1974. All of a sudden his ideas were being talked about. Hayek was a celebrity. He appeared as a star guest on NBC’s Meet the Press, newspapers across the country printed his photographs and treated his economic mumblings about the need to have high unemployment as if they were divine revelations. His Road to Serfdom hit the best-seller list. Margret Thatcher started waving around his books in public, saying “this is what we believe.”? He was back on top like never before, and it was all because of the fake Nobel Prize created by Sweden’s Central Bank.

Billionaire Charles Koch brought Hayek out for an extended victory tour of the United States, and had Hayek spend the summer as a resident scholar at his Institute for Humane Studies. Charles, a shrewd businessman, quickly put the old man to good marketing use, tapping Hayek’s mainstream cred to set up Cato Institute in 1974 (it was called the Charles Koch Foundation until 1977), a libertarian thinktank based on Hayek’s ideas. [Read eXiled eXclusive: Charles Koch told Hayek to use Social Security.]

http://exiledonline.com/the-nobel-prize ... economics/

[craigr]

Yes this is correct. I think the correct way to phrase it is something like: "The Economics Prize in honor of Alfred Nobel"

It is really not a "Nobel Prize" in the strict sense of the word.

[stone]

"Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel "
the wikipedia page has more on this. Actually the Hyek quote in this except is a big credit to Hyek IMO. It seems to me bad that it was controversial to give the prize to Nash. IMO a prize should be for an acheivement rather than for being currently or reliably capable. Nash may have been nuts when he received the prize but he had produced the work that the prize awarded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memo ... c_Sciences

Some critics argue that the prestige of the Prize in Economics derives in part from its association with the Nobel Prizes, an association that has often been a source of controversy. Among them is the Swedish human rights lawyer Peter Nobel, a great-grandson of Ludvig Nobel.[23] Nobel criticizes the awarding institution of misusing his family's name, and states that no member of the Nobel family has ever had the intention of establishing a prize in economics.[24]

According to Samuel Brittan of the Financial Times, both former Swedish minister of finance Kjell-Olof Feldt and Gunnar Myrdal wanted the prize abolished, saying "Myrdal rather less graciously wanted the prize abolished because it had been given to such reactionaries as Hayek (and afterwards Milton Friedman)."[21]

In his speech at the 1974 Nobel Banquet Friedrich Hayek stated that if he had been consulted whether to establish a Nobel Prize in economics he would "have decidedly advised against it"[21][25] primarily because "the Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess... This does not matter in the natural sciences. Here the influence exercised by an individual is chiefly an influence on his fellow experts; and they will soon cut him down to size if he exceeds his competence. But the influence of the economist that mainly matters is an influence over laymen: politicians, journalists, civil servants and the public generally."[25]

Critics cite the apparent snub of Joan Robinson as evidence of the Committee's bias towards mainstream economics,[26][27] though heterodox economists like Friedrich Hayek (Austrian School) and Ronald Coase (associated with New institutional economics) have won.

Milton Friedman was awarded the 1976 prize in part for his work on monetarism. Awarding the prize to Friedman caused international protests by the left,[28] Friedman was accused of supporting the military dictatorship in Chile, because of the relation of economists of the University of Chicago to Pinochet and a controversial six-day trip[29] he took to Chile during March 1975 (less than two years after the coup which deposed the democratically elected president Salvador Allende). Friedman himself answered, that he never was an adviser of the dictatorship, only gave some lectures and seminars on inflation and met with many officials including the dictator Augusto Pinochet in Chile.[30] Four Nobel Prize laureates – George Wald, Linus Pauling, David Baltimore and Salvador Luria – wrote letters to the New York Times protesting the award in October 1976.[31][32]

The 1994 prize to John Forbes Nash caused controversy within the prize's selection committee because of his history of mental illness and alleged anti-Semitism.[33] The controversy resulted in a change to the rules governing the committee during 1994. Previously, members of the Economics Prize Committee members did not have any limit to their term of service; they now serve for three years.[20]

The 2005 prize to Robert Aumann was criticized by European press due to his alleged use of his research of game theory to justify his stance against the dismantling of Israeli settlements from occupied territories.[34]