Re: Krugman Nobel Prize

Friedrich August von Hayek's speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1974:

Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Now that the Nobel Memorial Prize for economic science has been created, one can only be profoundly grateful for having been selected as one of its joint recipients, and the economists certainly have every reason for being grateful to the Swedish Riksbank for regarding their subject as worthy of this high honour.

Yet I must confess that if I had been consulted whether to establish a Nobel Prize in economics, I should have decidedly advised against it.

One reason was that I feared that such a prize, as I believe is true of the activities of some of the great scientific foundations, would tend to accentuate the swings of scientific fashion.

This apprehension the selection committee has brilliantly refuted by awarding the prize to one whose views are as unfashionable as mine are.

I do not yet feel equally reassured concerning my second cause of apprehension.

It is that 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 seize 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.

There is no reason why a man who has made a distinctive contribution to economic science should be omnicompetent on all problems of society - as the press tends to treat him till in the end he may himself be persuaded to believe.

One is even made to feel it a public duty to pronounce on problems to which one may not have devoted special attention.

I am not sure that it is desirable to strengthen the influence of a few individual economists by such a ceremonial and eye-catching recognition of achievements, perhaps of the distant past.

I am therefore almost inclined to suggest that you require from your laureates an oath of humility, a sort of hippocratic oath, never to exceed in public pronouncements the limits of their competence.

Or you ought at least, on confering the prize, remind the recipient of the sage counsel of one of the great men in our subject, Alfred Marshall, who wrote:

"Students of social science, must fear popular approval: Evil is with them when all men speak well of them".

(From Les Prix Nobel en 1974, Editor Wilhelm Odelberg, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1975)

Άραγε ο Paul Krugman θα ικανοποιούσε την, προτεινόμενη από τον Hayek, απαίτηση ο υποψήφιος για το βραβείο να μην υπερβαίνει σε δημόσιες δηλώσεις τα όρια της ικανότητας του; Εδώ που τα λέμε ούτε ο Hayek απέφυγε να γράψει εκλαϊκευμένα, αλλά απ'όσο γνωρίζω δεν ήταν ποτέ κομματικό φερέφωνο. Από την άλλη, όπως και η ίδια η επιτροπή για το βραβείο ανέφερε, ο Krugman είναι γνωστός για τα εξαιρετικώς κομματικά κατά τη γνώμη πολλών, μπλογκο-δημοσιογραφικά γραπτά του.

Ενημέρωση στις 16/10/2008:

Δεν ισχυρίζομαι σε καμμία περίπτωση ότι ο Krugman δεν άξιζε να πάρει το Nobel. Για την ακρίβεια δεν ξέρω αν άξιζε ή όχι: εφόσον δεν είμαι ειδικός στον τομέα της έρευνας του αναγκαστικά βασίζομαι σε ότι διαβάζω για αυτόν σε προσιτά για μένα κείμενα και συμπεραίνω ότι έχει κάνει πολύ σημαντικά πράγματα σε κάποιους τομείς των οικονομικών. Άρα μπορεί να αξίζει το βραβείο αλλά, ούτως ή άλλως, δεν θα αισθανόμουν άνετα να κρίνω εάν κάποιος άλλος οικονομολόγος είναι καλύτερος από τον Krugman επί καθαρά επιστημονικών θεμάτων.