Tag Archives: Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel

I don’t think anyone was surprised by this year’s “Nobel” prize in economics, which went to three American-based specialists in the design of on-the-ground experiments in low income countries, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer. I think the award has merit, but it is important to keep in mind the severe limitations of the work being honored.... On balance, I think it’s fine that this prize honors experimentalism, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the larger picture. Using...

Summary of their work.Marginal RevolutionThe Nobel Prize in Economic Science Goes to Banerjee, Duflo, and KremerAlex Tabarrok | Bartley J. Madden Chair in Economics at the Mercatus Center and Professor of Economics at George Mason University, and a research fellow with the Mercatus Center

Fifty years ago this year, the King of Sweden presented with royal pomp the first ever Nobel medals in economics. The prize has been dogged by controversy ever since. Alfred Nobel the founder of the awards never wanted an economics prize, hisde scendants want it scrapped and the economist F.A. Hayek said it was dangerous.That’s not the half. Serious thinkers argue that the prize in ‘economic sciences’, as it’s called, has given economic ideas which favour the rich and powerful the gloss of...

Paraphrasing that nineteenth-century critic of political economy, we might say that “economic decision-making appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.” We might credit Thaler and other behavioral economists, then, for having taken a first step in challenging the traditional neoclassical account of rational decision-making. But they stop...

Explanation of why expected utility theory is "an ex-hyoptheis."  Actually, there is a lot more wrong with it such hypotheses used as assumptions in the construction of homo economicus, and the exportation of homo economicus from theory to practical use. Homo economicus is a theoretical construct used to simplify the complexities of human behavior for use in an economic model. But human behavior is not limited to economics other than in quite specialized cases, where it is reasonable...