Trio of professors win Nobel economics prize for work on post-colonial wealth
British-born Simon Johnson and James A Robinson and Turkish-American Daron Acemoğlu share £810,000 prize
Alt title: 3 Old White Men Discover Colonialsm Bad
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. . . I used to teach this to high school sophomores in World History. To whom is this news?
Economists = a giant cocaine fueled circle jerk.
...consisting of guys born to a fantastic level of wealth who all have to pretend inequality doesn't exist in any capacity what so ever in order to make any of their theories work.
. . . brought to you by some of the same people behind this little gem: https://www.npr.org/2012/04/20/151047929/racist-cake-episode-cuts-swedes-the-wrong-way
How is the culture minister the "same people" as the Royal Academy of Sciences?
Did you also teach your students about ethnic prejudice?
Sorry about that, I mistook you for someone else. The Royal Academy of Sciences doesn't administer the Nobel Prize for Economics, which isn't one of the five official Nobel Prizes and thus overseen by a complex mix of the Swedish government--including the Academy of Sciences--and the Sveringes Riksbank.
Oh boy, ethnic prejudice: my own academic researched focused on borders and migration in colonial and post-colonial states and I taught US and World History on both the high school and college level. Race, racism, the Atlantic Slave Trade, and colonialism/post-colonialism pervade all of those subjects and were constants throughout my curriculum.
The economics prize is funded by Sveringes Riksbank but they are not involved in selecting a winner. Neither is the government. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is solely responsible for selecting the winner, and it is not part of government.
Here's the thing about economics: the "dismal science" is often trying to prove - or disprove - what appears to be common sense.
For instance, to some it's common sense that minimum wage increases cause more unemployment. To others, it's common sense that they don't. Eventually economists will reach a consensus, and it will be "not news" to half the population.
Since you've done research in this field, you must be aware that Acemoglu and Robinson have been publishing on this topic for ~20 years. Is there some earlier economist who was not properly given credit for their results?
My dude, generations historians, economists, and social critics from India and across sub-Saharan Africa have discussed these issues at length. There are libraries full of diverse works on the subject. The erasure of all that is on-brand for the Nobel Prize in Economics (which even Hayek said shouldn't exist in his own acceptance speech) and frankly on-brand for the Western academy as a whole.
South America also has a huge body of work on this.
The prize is for research in economics, not history or social science. They may be interested in the same topics, but economists usually take longer to reach a conclusion because their work is usually more data-driven.
Hence their conclusions appear to be "not news" to historians and social scientists who already believed the same things without the benefit of economic data.
As a quick semi-aside: 20 years isn't that long in academic research, and it's especially not that long when we're talking about colonialism/post-colonialism. It's a tremendous amount of time in the hard sciences I'm told but it's a mistake to apply that lens here.
That's kind of my point. They didn't come up with their ideas yesterday, so you shouldn't expect the results to appear groundbreaking today.
Ah, gotcha. We're talking at cross-purposes a bit I think.
Thank you for being civil through this; I genuinely appreciate that and it's nice to meet someone else who cares about these issues.
Here's the thing: Economics is not a science.
For instance, there's no scientific "answer" to whether minimum wage causes more unemployment because it's not a simplistic, binary question. It depends on a wide variety of social factors that are largely untestable, unfalsifiable, etc. The question itself is based on deep ideological assumptions (eg. it's desirable for people to be even more used/employed).
The issue of living wages is a social issue around basic human needs. Many and maybe most economists are paid precisely to justify the denial of human needs. That's what econ is really about. So there will never be any consensus on this phony "issue".
Is there a scientific "answer" to whether alcohol causes prostate cancer? That too depends on a wide variety of social factors and can be biased by ideological assumptions (eg drinking alcohol is a vice).
Nevertheless biologists develop competing models, use them to form hypotheses, test the hypotheses, subject the results to peer review, and revise their models to arrive at a consensus. Economists do all the same things.
The Swedish government and the Swedish academy are notoriously myopic/tone deaf when it comes to these issues.
*The Nobel Prize Committee
The Nobel Prize is awarded after a lifetime of work, not the latest news.
The 2022 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded for describing the violation of Bell inequalities. The initial experiments were performed in the 80s and the results are "not news" to many current high school physics teachers.
That is not true for the Nobel Prize in Economics, which is not one of the five official Nobel Prizes.
The prize in economic sciences is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden, according to the same principles as for the Nobel Prizes that have been awarded since 1901.
I think the important bit is getting lost in the shuffle over particulars: This research and the conclusion it presents are not original to three Western men from a first-world university. They've been discussed and explored at length by the academies of the post-colonial states who are dealing with the aftereffects of their own colonial experiences. This is a Eurocentric/Western-centric move on the part of, frankly, a bunch of privileged and insulated people.
Some critics argue that the prestige of the Prize in Economic Sciences 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-grandnephew of Alfred Nobel.[40]
Nobel accuses 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.[41] He explained that "Nobel despised people who cared more about profits than society's well-being", saying that "There is nothing to indicate that he would have wanted such a prize", and that the association with the Nobel prizes is "a PR coup by economists to improve their reputation".[40]
Why should anyone care what Nobel's descendants think?
It's kind of nice to see formal studies on it though - it might help with aide advocacy.
I'd like that to be true but the reality is the folks in charge will self-congratulate for a moment and then move on to the next "raising awareness" du jour.
First of all, I assume it was news to them when they got it and now it's news to the rest of us.
Secondly, I'm guessing what you taught did not include the research and the mathematics necessary in order for them to get the hard evidence to prove the thing you taught to high school sophomores.
I'm picturing a math or a science teacher saying something like this and it makes me laugh.
Well no, but what I taught to high school sophomore is--believe it or not--based on the research that academics and specialists have been doing for generations. The same is true for high school science and math teachers, by the way.
Thankfully your attempt to look sophisticated allows me to reiterate my point: this has been heavily researched, documented, and explored for several generations now. It's only news to people who have had the privilege of ignoring colonialism; many of them are in positions of authority or prestige. I'd recommend taking a look at the work of Franz Fanon or Aimee Cesaire to get a sense of how far back this line of thinking and research goes. Read that and I'll pass you some more global academic research on the topic.
Yes, and I'm sure people who taught children that 1+1=2 thought that Newton wasted a whole lot of time getting to what every small child knows in the Principia Mathematica.
(Do you think that possibly the claim that, as a history teacher, you know what these people in an entirely different field knew before they did, so their work is pointless, is a bit silly?)
That's not what Newton did with the Principia. You can read it for free online to confirm this.
I teach a course on the history of science if you're interested.
Yes, I know that's not what he did with the Principia. I was simplifying something very complicated because it's not in my field of expertise as if I was an expert on it.
This should sound familiar to you.
Let me ask you this: why is defending the Nobel committee so important to you?
I guess the same reason acting like you're smarter than Nobel prizewinners is important to you.
(Oh wait, neither of us are doing that? Huh.)
Ah, gotcha. Have a good day.
You too.
Although next time you act like high school history teachers knew exactly for what a Nobel prize in economics was awarded for decades, I would suggest going by the academic papers that the winners wrote rather than a summary of a press release that doesn't even name any of them.
But then I don't teach high school history, so I clearly don't know my stuff when it comes to these things.
I will bear all of that in mind. Have a good one. May the Force be with you.
