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
Quick reminder that the "Nobel prize in economics" is not actually a Nobel Prize.
(I didn't know this for a very long time, so this may be news to some people reading this.)
The prize wasn’t included in Alfred Nobel’s will and the funding for it doesn’t come from Nobel’s estate (it’s funded by the central bank of Sweden). However, the prize is administered by the Nobel Foundation and announced on their website.
The official name of the prize is THE SVERIGES RIKSBANK PRIZE IN ECONOMIC SCIENCES IN MEMORY OF ALFRED NOBEL which makes the distinction a bit more clear.
That is interesting to know but I feel that Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences is a bit long and the distinction is not really that meaningful.
Either the research is good or it isn't.
People keep attacking the price simply because it was not sponsored by Nobel himself as if only that direct connection to him transferred some sense of divine truthfulness to the other Nobel prizes that this one lacks.
. . . I used to teach this to high school sophomores in World History. To whom is this news?
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.
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.
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.
Has anybody actually looked at the paper instead of reacting to The Guardian's reaction?
Because as bad as the Nobel Prize Committee is at their job, that doesn't look like something you would find in one.
Thank you.
That was my point to the person above criticizing this.
I don't have the skills to review their work so I'm not going to say it's undeserved. And so far, I don't think anyone else commenting does either.
What hysterical was that I was listening to the BBC World Service hourly cast (5 minute summary) and they mentioned everything BUT the colonialism aspect.
Good job whitewashing the ethnic Armenian, OP.
I think that comment was aimed more at the Nobel Prize in Economics committee--administered and funded by Sweden's Riksbank--but your point does stand.
I guarantee you it didn't even occur to them. (Which is also bad.)
