The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics

Alfred Nobel, after whom the Bank of Sweden prize is named.

[Note: Part of the HET Website.  This page is not related to or endorsed by the Nobel Foundation, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or any other organization. See the official Nobel Memorial Prize website] 

In 1896, Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite, bequeathed his fortune to a foundation to create an annual prize for person "who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind."   Nobel's will specified prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology/medicine, literature and peace.  These were first awarded in 1901.

In 1969, the Swedish central bank (Sveriges Riskbank) established a prize known as the "Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel", which is commonly shortened to the Nobel Memorial Prize.   The Nobel Memorial Prize has a similar procedure of award selection (by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences) as the original Nobel prizes.  It also disburses the same monetary amounts and shares in the formal ceremony.

The Nobel Memorial Prize has been quite controversial since its inception and numerous objections have been raised against it.  The first objection is that economics is either not "scientific" enough or does not contribute to "human advancement" enough to merit the prestige of an award with the Nobel name.  The sentiment, often echoed in wider intellectual circles and the popular press, is shared by many economists themselves.  Indeed, Gunnar Myrdal, after having helped the Riksbank set it up in 1968 and receiving the award himself in 1974, eventually came to publicly admit this.  

The second objection, is that the Bank of Sweden's decision to use the prestigious "Nobel" name has thrust economics into a kind of medal race, pitting nations, universities and individual economists against each other.  All this leads to a lot of unnecessary acrimony that distracts and disrupts serious economics research. 

A third objection, and one that has become increasingly louder, is that there is an insufficient number of truly outstanding economists that deserve it.  After the initial splash of glorious names in the 1970s and early 1980s, many have come to argue that the awards made during the 1990s are more disputable.   

This is true to some extent, but understandable. When the awards began being handed out from 1969 onwards, there were generations upon generations of deserving scholars which had to be quickly awarded before it was too late.  The choices of the 1970s were not really disputed.  By sheer bad luck, giants such as Joan Robinson, Nicholas Kaldor, Abba Lerner and Don Patinkin never won the award partly because they were unfortunate enough to die too soon.   By the mid-1980s, with the "doubtless" Nobel laureates either already rewarded or dead, it was natural for the awards committee to begin pacing itself somewhat and start scooping gems from a little bit below the cream.  

A fourth objection is that the Nobel awards committee has its own agenda and doles out the awards with an eye to encourage the profession to move in a particular direction.   At the crudest level, some have claimed that it has  a "Chicago School" bias, given the number of economists associated with the University of Chicago that have won the awards (for a breakdown of the awards by nationality and school, click here).  

This is not wholly untrue, but it ought to be placed in context. The Nobel name, of course, lends a powerful platform to the recipients -- and the awards committee has made controversial and idiosyncratic choices which have had a profound impact on the economics profession.  The 1974 award to the nearly-obscure Friedrich A. Hayek, for instance, generated a huge resurgence of interest in Hayek and Austrian economics.  Milton Friedman's 1976 award elevated him overnight from the profession's maverick to one of its elder statesmen and gave Monetarism a more respectable polish.  In more recent years, awards have brought entire fields of study into the research spotlight: bounded rationality was virtually unknown before Herbert Simon's 1978 award; so was Public Choice theory until James Buchanan's 1986 award.   New Institutionalism and New Economic History were still fringe movements before the awards to Coase, Becker, Fogel and North in 1991-1993. Of course, at times, the suggestions of the Nobel committee do not seem to have the desired impact.  The awards to Kuznets and Stone, for instance, were perhaps meant to encourage the vital but unglamorous tasks of data compilation and interpretation, but there was no perceptible rise in interest as a consequence. 

A corollary to this is that the Bank of Sweden is occasionally criticized is for failing to choose the most popular candidates.  Some of the choices it made have been openly criticized by professional economists.  There are a number of perennial candidates so universally liked and recommended, always leading straw polls year after year, whom nonetheless received no award.  So, even if one disagrees violently with its choices or gets frustrated by the fact that one's favorite candidate keeps missing out, perhaps one ought to continue to admire the Bank of Sweden's bravery.

However, it is precisely because of the erratic and disproportionate "impact" the Bank of Sweden's choice has upon the profession and the shape of subsequent economics research that many  have called for an end to the Nobel Memorial Prize. One proposition is to replace it with a less lop-sided and less pretentious "lifetime award", like the Francis Walker Medal that used to be handed out by the American Economic Association.

The Bank of Sweden's Nobel Memorial prize for economics is announced around October 12th of every year, while the actual ceremony (shared with the original Nobel awards) is on December 8th.  Winners are requested to present a "Nobel Memorial Lectures", which is initially published in the volume Les Prix Nobel en 19xx, put out every year by the Nobel Foundation and then republished later in the academic journals of their laureate's choice.  In recent years, the American Economic Review has intermittently reprinted many of the Nobel Memorial Lectures.

NOBEL MEMORIAL PRIZES, 1969-1999.

1969 -

1970 -

1971 -

1972 -

1973 -

1974 -

1975 -

1976 -

1977  -

1978 -

1979 -

1980 -

1981 -

1982  -

1983 -

1984 -

1985 -

1986  -

1987  -

1988 -

1989 -

1990 -

1991 -

1992 -

1993 -

1994 -

1995 -

1996 -

1997 -

1998

1999 -

2000 - 

2001 - 

2002 - ? To be announced early October 2002.  Check out the Nobel laureates internet poll at Economics.com/Amherst College in the meantime.

NOBEL STATISTICS

Nobels Awarded

Nationalities of Laureates

(Note: foreign-born Kuznets, Koopmans, Debreu, Modigliani, Harsanyi and Scholes received their awards as Americans; foreign-born Hayek and Lewis received theirs as British.  Foreign citizenship was retained for recepients Coase (British) and Vickrey and Mundell (both Canadian)).

Affiliated Universities/Institutions (at time of award)

Universities where Laureates received their Highest Degree (Ph.Ds, etc.)

Resources on the Nobel Memorial Prize

 

Home Alphabetical Index Schools of Thought  Surveys and Essays
Web Links References Contact Frames