[HN Gopher] 2021 Nobel Prize for Economics
___________________________________________________________________
2021 Nobel Prize for Economics
Author : sbuccini
Score : 48 points
Date : 2021-10-11 16:27 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nobelprize.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nobelprize.org)
| throwaway59553 wrote:
| Why are "economists" taken seriously when they add absolutely
| nothing of value and are consistently wrong?
|
| A notable example: Krugman.
| ncann wrote:
| You expressed your opinion in a rather rugged way but I think
| many people share the same general sentiment, in that unlike
| physics or chemistry, economic and literature works are highly
| subjective and are often source of endless bickering.
| throwaway59553 wrote:
| The reason why I put economists in quoatation mark it's
| precisely because most modern economists, that lean to any
| school, hammer their models to fit their theories, and have
| pretty much no practical value when you try to apply that in
| a real scenario with infinite variables. Unlike the hard
| sciences you mentioned, where every theory and model is
| subjected to intense scrutiny.
|
| Meanwhile, real economists, with a proven track record:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_(economics)
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Economists in the public sphere are a fraction of
| practising economists and are often bought and paid for to
| push narratives. Or, as you said, hammer their models to
| fit their theories.
|
| Economics as a field though does create good models and
| predictions, but most of those are in the private sector,
| where money matters and weeds out faulty models.
| legitster wrote:
| You should actually read up on some of the work of some of
| these prize winning economists - lots of them actually have
| very insightful and useful contributions to society.
|
| I cannot recommend enough the book "Who Gets What and Why" by
| Alvin Roth, a former Nobel Prize winner. Among other things, he
| created the world's first successful Kidney exchange program
| for donors. The book eloquently lays out how to design
| functional markets of exchange when money is not a resource
| available.
|
| His work is easy to understand, eloquent, and literally saves
| lives. This is exactly the kind of thing worth celebrating.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| jmeister wrote:
| "The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when
| they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than
| is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little
| else.
|
| Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from
| any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some
| defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the
| air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler
| of a few years back." -- J M Keynes
|
| http://www.equitablegrowth.org/the-general-theory-of-employm...
| sva_ wrote:
| The fact that this was written by an economist makes the
| whole quote seem fairly self-masturbatory.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I agree that economists have a lot of value as political
| philosophers. But that's largely not how economics operates
| nowadays, the field is mostly trying to operate as a hard
| science.
| yboris wrote:
| Alex Tabarrok's _Marginal Revolution_ write up on this:
|
| https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/10/th...
| nabla9 wrote:
| People familiar with statistics or data science may be familiar
| with the work of Angrist and Imbens. They developed 2SLS and
| CACE/LATE.
|
| Check out Angrist's book: "Mastering 'Metrics: The Path from
| Cause to Effect"
| https://press.princeton.edu/books/ebook/9781400852383/master...
| https://www.masteringmetrics.com/
| styren wrote:
| The title is wrong, there's no such thing as the Nobel Prize for
| Economics, it's the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences
| _in Memory of_ Alfred Nobel 2021. Nitpick? Perhaps, but wrong
| nevertheless.
| mjw1007 wrote:
| I like to imagine the following conversation taking place
| around 1968:
|
| "There are some things money can't buy."
|
| "Like what?"
|
| "A Nobel prize, for example."
|
| "We'll see about that."
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Which, for shortness, we call the Nobel Prize in Economics.
|
| When someone says "North Korea", do you inform them that the
| correct title is "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea"?
| nsajko wrote:
| What if someone just says "Korea"? Seems like a better
| comparison.
| cpach wrote:
| Another option is to call it The Nobel Memorial Prize in
| Economic Sciences.
| serverholic wrote:
| How about we just call it The Nobel fucking Prize and move
| on with our lives?
| YorkshireSeason wrote:
| When someone says "The Democratic People's Republic of
| Korea", you _don 't_ inform them that the North Korea is
| _not_ a democracy?
| styren wrote:
| The prize wasn't conceived by Alfred Nobel nor endorsed by
| him. Can I come up with my own computer science award and
| name it a Nobel Prize as well?
| beebmam wrote:
| The Nobel Prize committee could, if they wanted
| styren wrote:
| Well they didn't for the Economics prize, the Swedish
| Riksbank asked the Nobel family for approval for an award
| _in his honor_ , which they approved.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| So there's your answer. If you can get the Nobel family
| to approve your award that is in his honor, then yes, you
| can.
| styren wrote:
| If the Nobel Foundation endorses a prize _in his honor_ ,
| then you can call it a prize _in his honor_ , that
| doesn't mean you can call it a Nobel Prize. No Swede, nor
| any reputable newspaper or the Nobel Foundation would
| ever call it a Nobel Prize since it has never been
| recognized as one by the foundation, why would we call it
| that on HN?
| mindcrime wrote:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+colloquialism
| monocasa wrote:
| The family actually protested pretty much immediately,
| not knowing that Sveriges Riksbank was trying to make
| another Nobel. That's why the name 'Nobel' was stripped
| from the prize in 1971 while it was working it's way
| through the court system.
|
| So no, the Nobel family isn't going to approve another
| because they didn't really approve of this one and aren't
| likely to sign anything anymore that's trying to sneak
| one in.
| legitster wrote:
| He likely would have endorsed it - it was a field that did
| not really exist at the time but did fit in well with
| Nobel's other awards and his person legacy.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| gojomo wrote:
| A better title might name either the honored area-of-work, or the
| honorees. EG:
|
| "2021 Economics Nobel: Natural experiments help answer important
| questions" (an in-page header)
|
| ...or...
|
| "2021 Economics Nobel: Card, Angrist, & Imbens"
|
| ...or even if it fits...
|
| "2021 Economics Nobel to Card, Angrist, & Imbens for natural
| experiments"
| cpach wrote:
| Please consider changing the title of this submission.
|
| IMHO, the correct title should be "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in
| Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2021".
|
| Rationale: A prize for economics was not part of Alfred Nobel's
| will. This prize was founded in the 1960's by Riksbanken (The
| Central Bank of Sweden).
| [deleted]
| gojomo wrote:
| If the Economics prize is OK with the Nobel Foundation, which
| administers the prize along with the others, that should be
| good enough.
|
| (Did you know that the "MacArthur Fellows" - sometimes called
| "Genius Grants" - were also invented by the board of the
| MacArthur Foundation after John MacArthur's death?)
| TomVDB wrote:
| When 1999 rolls over into 2000, you're going to be telling
| everyone that we should be celebrating 2000 rolling into 2001
| instead, right?
| nsajko wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| The current title ("Nobel Prize for Economics") is simply
| false. The official name is "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in
| Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2021", which can be
| shortened to "Nobel _Memorial_ Prize in Economic Sciences ".
|
| Note that this is meaningfully and on purpose unlike the
| Physics or Chemistry prize situation.
|
| What's more, even the current name is controversial, seeing as
| it misappropriates the Nobel name with the goal of elevating
| the social status of some economists. Peter Nobel, for one,
| seems to be furious about it, and it definitely isn't done
| according to the wishes of Alfred Nobel.
|
| Wikipedia:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Econom...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies#Econ...
|
| Also see Monocasa's comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28830961
| legitster wrote:
| But the award and prize are today managed by the same governing
| body?
|
| This seems incredibly nitpicky. We wouldn't say a Harvard
| degree in physics is not a _real_ Harvard degree just because
| it wasn 't offered by John Harvard himself.
| styren wrote:
| If I create a school called "The University in Harvards
| Honor" and give myself a diploma, am I a Harvard alumni?
| legitster wrote:
| The Nobel Memorial Prize is still administered by the Nobel
| Foundation. This isn't a made up connection.
| mhh__ wrote:
| If Harvard decided to give it to you, then maybe?
| lowkey_ wrote:
| Well this link is on nobelprize.org, the website of the
| official organization in charge of the Nobel Prize
| Committee.
|
| Thus, it's more like the comment you were replying to --
| creating a new degree program within Harvard University
| that John Harvard didn't authorize.
|
| Your analogy would be more accurate if this were not in
| fact created, endorsed, and run by the Nobel Foundation.
| styren wrote:
| You're right, but it was endorsed as a prize in his
| honor, not as a Nobel Prize with all that entails.
| Therefore it's incorrect to call it such. It's never
| called (or at least very seldomly) a Nobel Prize in
| Sweden as that isn't true.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Counter-point: yes it is.
|
| https://www.thelocal.se/20211011/trio-share-nobel-prize-
| for-...
| koziserek wrote:
| well it somewhat works for some Oxford Brookes grads ;)
| shapefrog wrote:
| Ah a fellow Oxford alumni, which college were you in old
| sport?
|
| Umm Brookes
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| But that's the name of the prize: Sveriges Riksbank Prize in
| Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Call it by its
| name.
|
| The prize in Physics is the "Nobel Prize if Physics", and so
| are the other ones. The difference is intentional.
|
| A self-respecting discipline starts its own prize instead of
| buying legitimacy.
|
| Computer Science has the Turing Award, not the ACM Prize in
| Computer Science in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
| svachalek wrote:
| It seems like that governing body should get to decide what
| it's called, and while this distinction is news to me it
| appears that they indeed do not call it a Nobel Prize.
| gojomo wrote:
| The Foundation uses the longer name when being formal, but
| regularly includes the Economics Prize as a 'Nobel Prize'
| in headers & lists - such as their top-level menu 'Nobel
| Prizes' (which includes the 'Prize in Economic Sciences'),
| and their master list of 'Nobel Prize laureates'.
|
| So headlines calling it a 'Nobel' match the Nobel
| Foundation's usage in similar summary/header contexts.
| nabla9 wrote:
| It's irrelevant historical detail.
| tuberelay wrote:
| There are big questions about the amount of gravitas that
| mainstream economists are afforded by people in power.
|
| Misnaming the econ prize as a "Nobel" prize and placing
| it's winners on the level of great physicists, chemists etc
| risks in exacerbating this problem.
|
| Much of the research done by econ memorial prize winners is
| walked back or proven false later. It isn't hard science.
| Much of it is politically driven and advice and
| practitioners are used by politicians to justify certain
| actions, many of them dysfunctional or corrupt.
| gojomo wrote:
| What Nobel-in-Economics work has been retracted?
|
| A Nobel-in-Chemistry went to an enthusiastic creator of
| chlorine gas chemical weapons (Haber). A Nobel-in-
| Medicine went to the inventor of the lobotomy (Moniz).
| Another Nobel-in-Medicine was awarded for false research
| about roundworms-causing-cancer (Fibiger). A Nobel-in-
| Peace went to the architect of secret carpet bombing that
| likely killed over 100,000 civilians in a non-combatant
| country (Kissinger).
|
| The Econ prize's shorter, more modern history has a
| better record!
| nabla9 wrote:
| In quality metrics Econ Nobel is way ahead of literature
| and peace Nobel's.
|
| > Much of the research done by econ memorial prize
| winners is walked back or proven false later. It isn't
| hard science.
|
| This is not just true. Econ price almost always well
| earned, like now. Maybe there is some, but I can't think
| anyone who don't deserve it.
| originalvichy wrote:
| That birthdate difference sounds like the difference in NHL kids'
| success that's based on how early in the year you were born.
| Statistically the earlier born kids get more mass and muscle and
| get moved to better teams faster.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Gotta love it when the prize document itself highlights the
| pitfalls of the methodology used by the winners...
|
| > Despite the enormous increase in labour supply, Card found no
| negative effects for Miami residents with low levels of
| education. Wages did not fall and unemployment did not increase
| relative to the other cities.
|
| > while people who immigrated at an earlier time are negatively
| affected. One explanation for this is that the natives switch to
| _jobs that require good native language skills, and where they do
| not have to compete with immigrants for jobs._
|
| If this isn't terrible methodology I don't know what is.
|
| Literally using bad data to say immigration doesn't affect the
| labour market, then saying it does for same-language jobs. So it
| obviously does but language is a barrier to entry for some jobs.
| Literally invalidates the first point.
| shkkmo wrote:
| I don't understand how this is bad data? It seems to me that
| you are asserting a claim "immigration doesn't effect the labor
| market" that was never made.
|
| > Card found no negative effects for Miami residents with low
| levels of education. Wages did not fall and unemployment did
| not increase relative to the other cities.
|
| Additionally, the claims about specific types of effects on the
| labour market that you quote were from follow up studies and
| also don't conflict with the results of the earlier study.
|
| Low-income residents on average, had no negative effects but
| follow up studies split up that low income group and found that
| one subgroup benefits and another subgroup suffers.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Edit:
|
| The line above the first I quoted: > Despite the enormous
| increase in labour supply, Card found no negative effects for
| Miami residents with low levels of education.
|
| Then a few lines down (my first post), it said there were
| negative effects for previous immigrants with low levels of
| education. They made the assertion, then disproved it in the
| same paragraph, supposedly this is a highlight of the award?
|
| It literally says an increase in immigration negatively
| affects the labour market for previous immigrants/workers who
| speak the same language. This != no negative effect...
|
| The previous conclusion ignores a bunch of other factors.
| shkkmo wrote:
| I still fail to see how this is "bad data"?
|
| You seem to be asserting that you can't make a statistical
| claim about a larger group unless that claim applies to
| every single possible subgroup? That is a rather ridiculous
| standard that would invalidate pretty much every single
| statistical claim ever made...
|
| > The previous conclusion ignores a bunch of other factors.
|
| Which ones?
|
| Edit: You significantly edited your comment during my
| response. My response to your edits follows:
|
| > They made the assertion, then disproved it in the same
| paragraph, supposedly this is a highlight of the award?
|
| There is nothing disproving the original claim. The follow
| up studies performed more detailed analysis that looked at
| effects on subgroups to increase our understanding of the
| effects of immigration beyond what the original study
| found. This is a highlight because the original study was
| valuable not just for its results but for the methedology
| that facilitated a bunch of further research.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Go back to what's in the article:
|
| > To examine how this huge influx of workers affected the
| labour market in Miami, David Card compared the wage and
| employment trends in Miami with the evolution of wages
| and employment in four comparison cities.
|
| > Despite the enormous increase in labour supply, Card
| found no negative effects for Miami residents with low
| levels of education. Wages did not fall and unemployment
| did not increase relative to the other cities. This study
| generated large amounts of new empirical work, and we now
| have a better understanding of the effects of
| immigration.
|
| Look at the conclusion: "Card found NO negative effects
| for Miami residents with low levels of education." NO
| negative effects is quite the statement.
|
| Now, the follow up studies:
|
| > or example, follow-up studies have shown that increased
| immigration has a positive effect on income for many
| groups who were born in the country, while people who
| immigrated at an earlier time are negatively affected.
| One explanation for this is that the natives switch to
| jobs that require good native language skills, and where
| they do not have to compete with immigrants for jobs.
|
| Now that's a negative effect. He made the assertion of NO
| negative effects.
|
| In second year economics my prof would have failed me for
| such a basic conclusion. Look at influx of people,
| compare unemployment rates to other cities, make
| conclusion from that.
|
| When immigration happens there's things happening on both
| sides of the supply/demand curve. Immigrants bring money,
| they also are labour. Different groups bring varying
| amounts of supply/demand. They compete for various jobs
| depending on their level of education (including
| language). There's also undocumented employment.
|
| Anyhow, there's no mention of the wealth of the
| immigrants (often western nations are recipients of
| capital flight), no mention of aggregate demand, it says
| wages didn't fall but no mention of inflation and wage
| growth (ie. real wages), etc...
|
| And if a study is so easily invalidated (sorry,
| elaborated upon), what's the point? Anyhow, it stuck out
| to me because it's an oft-cited study despite being
| incredibly basic and flawed (and many studies since more
| or less disproving it).
|
| Anyhow, it's bad data (well, bad methodology from start
| to finish) because it draws a conclusion based on
| correlation between immigration and unemployment/wages
| without considering a ton of factors in between. It's
| like taking a chart of AAPL, GOOG, saying one depends on
| the other because they both go up during the same
| timeframe, ignoring everything else that's happening in
| the economy and tech industry.
|
| Edit - it should also be mentioned, that literally the
| last ~5 or so years of politics in the west have centred
| around inequality, the plight of uneducated workers in
| the western world, globalism's effect of living
| conditions in the western world, etc... Populism on both
| the left and right is a thing because of it. It's pretty
| clear that a significant segment is being left behind.
| Wage stagnation IS a thing, and we know it because
| there's a lot of hindsight in the last 30 years. And
| Covid exacerbated inequality, with educated workers
| increasing their net worth drastically while lockdowns
| wreaked havoc on large segments of the economy. The cited
| study says absolutely nothing about the labour market,
| except that in one time and place, unemployment and wages
| didn't go down.
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| >> In second year economics my prof would have failed me
| for such a basic conclusion.
|
| This is a hilarious comment. You are saying that your
| _economics_ professor would have failed you for making a
| claim akin to what one of these three _Economics_ _Nobel_
| _laureates_ claimed in a very well known, classic article
| in the labor literature? I 'm an economics professor and
| I would be _delighted_ to see work like this from an
| undergrad!
|
| >> Now that's a negative effect. He made the assertion of
| NO negative effects.
|
| What you and later studies have identified is that there
| may be heterogeneous causal effects across groups. There
| is a large literature on this topic!
|
| >> if a study is so easily invalidated...
|
| I'm not worried about this. You have not "invalidated"
| this study with five minutes of thinking!
|
| >>> it's bad data (well, bad methodology from start to
| finish) because it draws a conclusion based on
| correlation between immigration and unemployment/wages
|
| 1. It is not bad methodology. That is literally what half
| of the prize which went to Imbens and Angrist is about.
| This is a methodology which permits making causal claims
| in the absence of an experiment!
|
| 2. It is _not_ drawing a conclusion based on a
| correlation.
|
| For more information about what they actually did and how
| it works (and this is a big interesting topic!) you might
| benefit from the Nobel Foundation's scientific background
| paper on this prize, here:
| https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2021/10/advanced-
| economic...
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| So an appeal to authority? The same organization that
| thought a US President that destabilized the middle east
| and assassinated people via drones deserved the Nobel
| Peace prize?
| shkkmo wrote:
| > It's like taking a chart of AAPL, GOOG, saying one
| depends on the other because they both go up during the
| same timeframe, ignoring everything else that's happening
| in the economy and tech industry.
|
| That's funny because the reason these researchers are so
| lauded is precisely because they found novel
| methodologies to avoid doing exactly the sort of purely
| correlative analysis that you describe.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Read the whole paper or at least article. This year's
| prize is laughable compared to everything else that's
| happened in economics in the last decade.
| gbronner wrote:
| So sad about Alan Krueger.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| For those not in the know on econ research (like me!) I believe
| this comment refers to the fact that Alan Krueger was deeply
| involved in this work, but that the Nobel committee only honors
| living scientists.
|
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/2118030
| petters wrote:
| Judea Pearl writes about these news:
| https://twitter.com/yudapearl/status/1447596402670903304?t=X...
|
| Edit: downvotes suggest some context may be needed. Pearl win the
| Turing award for casual inference but has been critical of the
| current Nobel recipients' methods.
| tenkabuto wrote:
| I'm curious to know what he means by that their work
|
| > overlook[s] the two Fundamental Laws of causal inference.
| sjg007 wrote:
| The two things that have to hold are:
|
| 1. The law of Counterfactuals and 2. The Law of Conditional
| Independence
|
| You can find preprints from Pearl online or even some
| presentations that cover these definitions. His books as
| well.
|
| I don't know how this applies to the work by the economists.
| I think Gelman at Columbia talks about Pearl and SCMs and the
| whole thing.
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(page generated 2021-10-11 23:02 UTC)