The Nobel Prize in Economics is arguably not a "real" Nobel Prize since Alfred Nobel made no provision for such a prize in his will. It was instead established by the Bank of Sweden in the late 1960s as a Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. And they arguably did this for ideological reasons since conventional mainstream economics was coming under fire in the wake of the upheavals of the 1960s.
Anyway,concerning the Nobel Prize in economics. There is the strange case of Joan Robinson, and why she didn't get the Nobel Prize in economics. She was widely expected to get the Prize in 1975. Indeed, Business Week published a profile on her, precisely because they, along with just about everybody else was expecting her to win the Prize, but the Nobel committee, instead, at the last moment, awarded it to Leonid Kantorovich, and the American, Tjalling C. Koopmans, for their work in creating linear programming. Apparently, Robinson despite her contributions in such areas as the analysis of imperfect competition and capital theory (work which was of at least the same caliber as that of other economists who did win the Prize) was denied it because of her outspoken leftist, even Maoist, politics, and many say, because she was after all a woman. No woman has ever won the Prize in economics. It was also said that the Nobel Committee was fearful that she might "pull a Sartre" and turn down the prize, possibly following that up with a denunciation of the economics profession in general. In fact it is reported that she went out of her way to reassure the Committee that she had no intentions of doing any such thing, but they never awarded her the Prize anyway. And of course a man like Paul Sweezy, who was the dean of American Marxist economics was never in the running for such a prize, even though he had made contributions to technical economics (such as his "kinked edge" demand curve under conditions of oligopoly) which would have normally merited the Prize if that work had been done by someone else. Jim F. ---------- Original Message ---------- From: CeJ <jann...@gmail.com> To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist > calculation debate Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 19:20:25 +0900 Also, it might interesting to note here that Koopmans won the prize the same year (1975), and the work of Koopmans and Kantorovich really follows from the first winner of the prize, Tinbergen. And Frisch btw won it at the same time as Tinbergen. Although Kantorovich may be the only 'Soviet' here, he is not at all anathema to the likes of Koopmans, Tinbergen, or Myrdal, the guy who won it the same year as von Hayek (1974). Austrian economics is often heterodox to other forms of economics emanating from both sides of the political spectrum. That is because counter 20th century trends, it eschews quantification (stats, maths), induction and experimental induction. So you can put the Austrians in counterpoint with just about any mainstream economist of distinction. Conservatives, I think, tended to 'cherry-pick' ideas from the Austrians to serve their ideological purposes. BTW, the prize in economics is a very strange prize, with a very complex and changing title. See this take: http://www.samuelbrittan.co.uk/text172_p.html ____________________________________________________________ Protect your investment. Click here to find the homeowner insurance policy that you need. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTIoQHDtrclOMCC5BNhFhOABiGUTdiZTlCUoOcOaBPlrosPpTYsLqo/ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
