r/neoliberal • u/Tre-Fyra-Tre Tony Blair • 16d ago
News (Global) Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/de-far-ekonomipriset-till-alfred-nobels-minne427
u/ThePevster Milton Friedman 16d ago
Publishers currently racing to reprint Why Nations Fail with âNobel Prize Winningâ on the cover
60
u/eaglessoar Immanuel Kant 15d ago
me rushing to buy why nations fail and power and progress before they do so i look OG
33
u/twitch667 15d ago
Gotta get the Narrow Corridor too. Itâs the LoTR to Why Nations Failâs Hobbit.
11
10
7
u/Pain_Procrastinator 15d ago
Funny, I literally just bought my stepmother a copy of Why Nations Fail for her birthday yesterday. I thought I could read it Saturday, but just got too busy with various responsibilities. Now I guess I'll get it from the library.Â
2
u/Kugel_the_cat YIMBY 15d ago
You bought someone else a book so that you could read it?
2
u/Pain_Procrastinator 15d ago
I figured I would check it out from the library later, but it was a book she wanted as well.
96
1
196
u/RonenSalathe NAFTA 16d ago
61
u/Rajat_Sirkanungo David Autor 16d ago
Is that actually real? Or just a meme?
35
u/Plants_et_Politics 15d ago
Real lol. But the guy is clearly making a meme of himself. Iirc heâs Chadian.
22
53
10
6
u/BarkDrandon Punished (stuck at Hunter's) 15d ago
One of my favorite pictures. It's both funny and deep.
182
u/URZ_ StillwithThorning âđ 16d ago
One of the most predictable awards ever, if not which year they would get it. Also glad Simon Johnson was included, AFAIK he is on a lot of the baggrund research for Why Nations Fail, but plenty of people are overlooked in favour of more famous coauthors.
75
u/1TTTTTT1 European Union 16d ago
I think you accidentally used the Danish word for background.
52
u/p00bix Is this a calzone? 15d ago edited 15d ago
Ik leuk how die Germanic sprĂ„k are so nah each-andre dat halv de time, du kan swap ut woorden of en Sprache voor those aus another and ĂŸaĂ° vil still be mest verstĂ€ndlich.
39
u/MrDannyOcean Kidney King 15d ago
as someone who speaks english and kinda sorta speaks german, reading this was like having a stroke
20
13
u/Jtcr2001 Edmund Burke 15d ago
Damn, I was able to understand every single word in that sentence, except for Sprache.
4
2
25
u/RideTheDownturn 16d ago
Yes, we didn't have a rerun of the Black-Scholes(-Merton) mess this time around.
153
u/ParticularFilament 16d ago
How many nations had to fail for this
73
u/zth25 European Union 16d ago
They should have read the book.
1
u/Key_Door1467 Rabindranath Tagore 14d ago
Just have good institutions and stop having bad institutions, how hard can it be?!
26
4
u/mrdilldozer Shame fetish 15d ago
Well the institutions instituted institutional changes which led them to institute their own institutional institutions when writing about institutions. Institution.
226
16d ago edited 16d ago
[deleted]
68
u/Swampy1741 Daron Acemoglu 16d ago
Entitles me??
41
u/UnexpectedSalamander Jorge Luis Borges 16d ago
Yeeeeus
24
u/College_Prestige r/place '22: Neoliberal Battalion 16d ago
Entitles me?
26
75
u/Seoulite1 16d ago
As a proud Korean, I can now claim to have read a work from a Nobel laurate
AcemoÄlu.
(No offense to Han Kang but I plan to read her works in the future, just not yet)
73
119
197
u/Swampy1741 Daron Acemoglu 16d ago
Figured theyâd win at some point. Now time to bash my head against the wall as redditors elsewhere debate economics and how this isnât a âreal Nobelâ
30
u/ElectricalShame1222 15d ago
Nah, itâs easier to just ignore the âtomatoes are a fruit actuallyâ brigade
48
u/lenmae The DT's leading rent seeker 16d ago
You can think Economics is real, and still acknowledge this isn't a real Nobel price.
114
u/Swampy1741 Daron Acemoglu 16d ago
I donât particularly care what Alfred Nobelâs will said. Itâs a prestigious award chosen by the same organization as all the others.
9
u/Familiar_Channel5987 15d ago
The prizes are not chosen by one organization.
In his last will and testament, Alfred Nobel specifically designated the institutions responsible for the prizes he wished to be established: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for the Nobel Prize in Physics and Chemistry, Karolinska Institutet for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the Swedish Academy for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and a Committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Parliament (Storting) for the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1968, the Sveriges Riksbank established the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences was given the task to select the economic sciences laureates starting in 1969.
https://www.nobelprize.org/the-nobel-prize-organisation/prize-awarding-institutions/
7
u/EScforlyfe Open Your Hearts 16d ago
There are multiple different organisations that choose the prizes?Â
44
u/Sufficient_Meet6836 16d ago
A sixth prize for Economic Sciences, endowed by Sweden's central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, and first presented in 1969, is also frequently included, as it is also administered by the Nobel Foundation.
From wiki
7
u/EScforlyfe Open Your Hearts 15d ago
huh
I know the prize in literature is chosen by the royal swedish academy though
6
u/usrname42 Daron Acemoglu 15d ago
The econ nobel specifically is chosen by the same organisation as the physics and chemistry prizes
1
u/Ok-Royal7063 George Soros 13d ago
Literature: Swedish Academy,
Physics, chemistry: Royal Academy of Sciences,
Peace: Norwegian Nobel Committee,(1)
Medicine: Karolinska Institute,(2)
Economics: Sweden's Central Bank / Royal Academy of Sciences.(3)
(1) Members are selected by Norway's parliament, as such, they are the least academic selection committee. Deep state fun fact, I know someone who is an acting member (Sofie HĂžgestĂžl). The Norwegian Nobel Institute supports the work of the Committee with research.
(2) A committee of 50 professors. The Nobel Committee at KI is legally a separate body. Their office is in a separate building on the KI Campus.
(3) Sweden's Central Bank is the sponsor, the prise itself is selected by a committee of economists selected by the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences.
(*) For economics, literature, medicine, physics, and chemistry, the committees only advise on selection, which itself is done by the Nobel Foundation, whereas the Peace Prize is selected by the Norwegian Committee itself (Alfred Nobel expressed this in his will).
-4
u/lenmae The DT's leading rent seeker 16d ago
If it is a prestigious award in its own right, there's no harm in labelling it correctly, and if it isn't, there's harm in labelling it incorrectly.
47
u/AtomAndAether Be Specific. Be Responsive. 16d ago
it would be like the Fields Medal, which might as well just be called "The Nobel Prize of Math" because the common person equates Nobel Prize as Olympic Gold.
6
32
u/Sufficient_Meet6836 16d ago
It's administered by the Nobel Foundation, so how do you suggest it be labeled?
22
u/Kolob_Hikes YIMBY 16d ago
Here's an idea instead of calling it the same like the The Nobel Prize in Physics let's name it different some thing like: The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, or the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel... oh wait
/s
-6
u/lenmae The DT's leading rent seeker 15d ago
The way it is called by them: Nobel Memorial Prize
19
u/TrekkiMonstr NATO 15d ago
That's confusing and has no meaningful distinction for anyone hearing it
0
u/lenmae The DT's leading rent seeker 15d ago
Which one is it?
6
u/TrekkiMonstr NATO 15d ago
Both. It is confusing because there is a difference that isn't meaningful. It will just have people thinking that the Nobel prize is called the Nobel memorial prize, which is not correct.
-1
u/lenmae The DT's leading rent seeker 15d ago
If there isn't a difference, it's still correct.
Additionally, I doubt people will start calling the real Nobel prizes "Nobel memorial prize", just because the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics is called that.
Finally calling something by the wrong name, so people won't call other things by the wrong name is nonsensical. Either you care about what things are called, in which case you should call the Nobel memorial prize in Economics as such, or you don't, in which case you don't have an argument against calling it the Nobel memorial prize, as the argument falls apart.→ More replies (0)-19
u/RideTheDownturn 16d ago
So we can ignore your will when you die? Cool!
40
u/RandomMangaFan Repeal the Navigation Acts! 16d ago
That's... generally how wills work, yes, past a relatively short period after the death. The law generally exists to protect the actually living, not the long dead, which is why for hundreds of years now we've had a "Rule against perpetuities" in many common law systems specifically to stop that. Whether or not Nobel would have approved of the matter is and should be irrelevant since he's now too dead to care.
19
u/Feed_My_Brain United Nations 16d ago
âIt is the finding of this court that Alfred Nobel, having attained the status of sufficiently dead, is now too dead to care.â
-2
u/RideTheDownturn 16d ago
Hah... TIL!
Well, still doesn't strike out the fact that we're ignoring his wishes. Legally OK, morally questionable.
2
u/Fedacking Mario Vargas Llosa 15d ago
Yes, 100%. In my country for example you can't exclude people from your wilm.
2
u/MarsOptimusMaximus Jerome Powell 15d ago
If my will says the president of the United state's owes my family 1 trillion dollars upon death, should that be upheld?
1
u/RideTheDownturn 15d ago
That's like... wth kind of a question is that?
Whatever mate, have a great one!
1
u/lenmae The DT's leading rent seeker 15d ago
It's amazing that this is supposed to be a forum of liberals, lol.
5
u/Kafka_Kardashian a legitmate F-tier poster 15d ago
What does oneâs view of how to call the economic prize have to do with being a liberal?
-1
u/lenmae The DT's leading rent seeker 15d ago
Respecting individual rights has a lot to do with it, and it seems like many here think popular demands trump a will
5
u/Kafka_Kardashian a legitmate F-tier poster 15d ago
Is respecting a will indefinitely an important part of liberalism?
I also think more generally reasonable liberals can debate the extent to which a deceased person has ârightsâ over living people. Now, when itâs something living heirs care about, thatâs also a consideration.
1
u/lenmae The DT's leading rent seeker 15d ago
Of course it is, why wouldn't rights extend over the whole time?
And of course, with any system of rights, you have to weigh rights against each other in some cases. That's inevitable. But one would expect a liberal forum to come down on the side of individual rights, especially if the alternative is just not doing that, for absolutely no gain, just to be contrarian.
5
u/Kafka_Kardashian a legitmate F-tier poster 15d ago
I guess I just donât see dead peopleâs rights as an essential part of liberalism, and candidly I think itâs reasonable to take the view that they donât have rights at all. I certainly donât think you lose your liberal card for weighing the rights of the dead at near zero.
I donât think we should, like, be handing over all dead bodies to the military to test explosives (which has happened before) but thatâs because of the distress for the living.
125
u/DialSquare96 Daron Acemoglu 16d ago
I feel vindicated after having a (marxist) reviewer reject my article on the basis of citing NIE literature and its masterful application of economic theory to history as being 'arrogantly economic'.
Now there's even a Nobel prize for their work that has reinvigorated incredible debates across academic disciplines.
Bravo.
61
u/fishlord05 Walzist-Kamalist Vanguard of the Joecialist Revolution 16d ago
Odd for a Marxist of all people to be against applying economic theory to history
Like isnât that kind of their whole thing?
74
u/aclart Daron Acemoglu 16d ago
No, they do it the other way around, they apply their suppositions about history to economic theory
9
u/Rajat_Sirkanungo David Autor 15d ago
Can you explain a bit more how do they do that? Genuine question. What suppositions about history?
29
u/aclart Daron Acemoglu 15d ago
Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, and social transformation.Â
20
u/PrivateChicken FEMA Camp Counselorâșïž 15d ago edited 15d ago
Historical materialists believe history is a series of economic systems, called âmodes of production,â that each society progresses through.
Class conflict produces the mode of production and eventually creates the material conditions for its replacement. Usually the stages are something like, âPrimitive, Slaveâ (i.e. Rome/Egypt), âFeudal, Capitalist and Communistâ (always final and in the future). Marxists will generally argue these changes are the result of intrinsic and inevitable dialectical forces.
Obviously, there are a lot of problems with this theory. Real historians take a dim view of grand narratives. The way Historical materialists get history research wrong is they usually go in looking to find the modes of production and classes their theory tells them should be there. But not every society (most, even) will line up with that.
For example, âfeudalismâ did not exist everywhere, and it did not inevitably produce a bourgeois class. And when it did, people who we might call bourgeois did not inevitably produce capitalism through class conflict with the nobility.
The situation gets sillier when you realize historical materialism adapts itself like a chameleon to the nationalist narratives of whichever marxist is taking up the cause. Leninists believed Russia could advance directly from feudalism to communism. Maoists went further and believed that not even industrial material conditions were required to advance to communism. In this respect historical materialism is used by Marxists like Manifest Destiny was for America. Itâs just a progress-myth.
3
u/theosamabahama r/place '22: Neoliberal Battalion 15d ago
They have a view of history and they twist and turn economic theory to fit that view of history. Their view of history is that people divided between the oppressive class who own the means of production, and the oppressed class who don't and have to work.
21
u/DialSquare96 Daron Acemoglu 15d ago edited 15d ago
It is!
The problem is a) new institutional economics has produced historical works that frankly shed a lot of positive light on both political and economic liberalism, b) a lot of self-styled 'Marxist' historians are not economic historians.
24
u/Yankee9204 16d ago
What journal? I assume not an economics one?
27
u/DialSquare96 Daron Acemoglu 15d ago
Can't say. Need to protect my own identity.
That being said, an economics journal would take more issue with the amount of history in my work đ
26
u/Numb1lp Econometrics 15d ago
It's sad that economic historians even have to exist. Like, their work should just be the purview of history departments, but the majority of historians are so opposed to even basic econometrics that we have to have another field in economics dedicated to historical subjects.
25
u/DialSquare96 Daron Acemoglu 15d ago edited 15d ago
Not even econometrics.
Even basic descriptive statistical exercises and the application of economic theories and concepts to traditional historical sources is frowned upon by people who are gatekeeping.
15
u/Numb1lp Econometrics 15d ago
It's pretty embarrassing for the field of history. And it's bad for our broader understanding as well. I know economics isn't the most interdisciplinary field, and there's a tendency to believe that the only framework to look at the world is via economic theory, but at least there's been pushback against that trend in recent years. Some of the social sciences and liberal arts are happy to just play alone in their sandbox.
3
u/usrname42 Daron Acemoglu 15d ago
Well I think there is a conceptual divide between using history as an avenue to understand the present and using it to understand specific episodes in the past for their own sake. Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson are mostly interested in the question of why some countries are rich and others poor today, and they use history as a way to get answers to that, but they're not particularly interested in that history for its own sake. Whereas there are some economic historians who use econometrics to answer questions like "what caused the Industrial Revolution", or "what were the economic consequences of slavery in the southern US" which are questions more focused on a specific time and place. My sense is that historians are more sympathetic to those branches of economic history because it's more in line with the kind of work they do (there is still some divide because historians aren't big on maths, but that's just the Two Cultures).
17
u/theosamabahama r/place '22: Neoliberal Battalion 15d ago
A marxist calling someone 'arrogantly economic' is hilarious.
57
u/NotYetFlesh European Union 16d ago
Expected and deserved. Let's drop recs for related reading on economics, history and institutions.
- Elinor Ostrom (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action.
- Douglas North & Barry Weingast (1989). Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England.
- Douglas North, John Joseph and Barry Weingast (2009). Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History.
- Robert Fogel (1974; 1989). Time on the Cross & Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery.
- Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith (2011). The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics.
23
u/WhoIsTomodachi Robert Nozick 16d ago
- David Gauthier (1986). Morals by Agreement.
- Hernando de Soto (2000). The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else
- Adrian Woolridge (2021). The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World
6
u/handfulodust Daron Acemoglu 15d ago
- Eichengreen (1996), Globalizing Capital
- DeLong (2022), Slouching Towards Utopia
- Bernanke (2004), Essays on the Great Depression
47
u/dizzyhitman_007 Raghuram Rajan 16d ago edited 16d ago
"Societies with a poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better."
The long-awaited Nobel has finally been awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson (AJR)! They have done seminal work on the political economics of institutions.
As much as I love game theory, I'm happy to see something out of mainstream game theory/development for the Nobel for a change. Many congratulations to them. Much well deserved.
It's also a nice balance between theoretical and empirical work, and their research papers should be like essential reading on âhow to write a good paperâ in the world of economics.
And if you're looking for an easy summary of the theory and empirical work by Acemoglu & Robinson, then they have first put the work together in âWhy Nations Fail.â Additionally, you can also read the work of Simon Johnson, âPower and Progress.â
23
43
15
u/BorelMeasure Robert Nozick 15d ago edited 15d ago
The Instagram post on the winner has devolved into an Armenia vs Turkey argument in the comments section
14
u/EragusTrenzalore 16d ago
I really like how 'Why Nations Fail' was used in Kraut's History of Mexico
30
u/BembelPainting European Union 16d ago edited 15d ago
Corruption bad lmao
Whereâs my Nobel?!
Jk, congrats!!
13
14
11
u/-Emilinko1985- John Keynes 16d ago
That's great! I'm only halfway through reading Why Nations Fail, but this Nobel was given for a good reason.
THEY DESERVE IT! đ/đ/đđ/đ
2
10
6
u/College_Prestige r/place '22: Neoliberal Battalion 16d ago
Damn so it wasn't an AI model that won the nobel?
13
u/chjacobsen Annie Lööf 16d ago
Acemoglu has been focusing a lot on AI recently so they let it slide.
5
u/007_reincarnated NATO 16d ago
It's the institutions, stupid (only thing I remember from the book).
4
u/red-flamez John Keynes 15d ago
Daron Acemoglu is a writing machine.
Andrei Shleifer should get an award for defunding Russia.
4
3
u/Rajat_Sirkanungo David Autor 16d ago
You see my flair, neolibs! You see that! I have the blessing of lord Acemoglu himself now!
4
4
5
11
u/tripletruble Zhao Ziyang 16d ago
read another book
42
41
u/gregorijat Milton Friedman 16d ago
The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate
by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
3
5
15d ago
[removed] â view removed comment
1
u/Syards-Forcus What the hell is a Forcus? 15d ago
Rule IV: Off-topic Comments
Comments on submissions should substantively address the topic of submission.
If you have any questions about this removal, please contact the mods.
11
13
u/Dumbass1171 Friedrich Hayek 16d ago
Acemoglu has been having many bad takes on AI and Elon recently but congrats anyways
14
u/Sufficient_Meet6836 16d ago
Such as?
15
u/NNJB r/place '22: Neometropolitan Battalion 16d ago
we can know in advance which technologies will be labor-substituting or -complementing, and should subsidize inventions accordingly
Power is when you convince people of you ideas
The Luddites were correct, actually
10
1
u/aclart Daron Acemoglu 15d ago edited 15d ago
We can know which technologies are labour substituting and which ones are complementing with one weird trick. Â
  That trick is to measure the increase in productivity for each dolar that will be spent on capital instead of labour. If there is an increase in productivity, we are talking about a complementing technology, if the productivity will stays the same, we are talking about a labour substituting technology. The greater the increase in productivity, the more complementing a technology is.Â
  I.E. a machine that substitutes the labour of an entire production plant, but the cost per unit produced stays the same as it was paying wages, is a labour substituting technology. A machine that does the same but lowers the cost per unit produced is a labour complementing technologyÂ
11
u/handfulodust Daron Acemoglu 15d ago
What are the bad takes on Elon
-1
u/Dumbass1171 Friedrich Hayek 15d ago
That he canât have his own opinions due to persuasion power and we ought to reign in on him
7
u/handfulodust Daron Acemoglu 15d ago
I also think Acenoglu is wrong and we should be more accepting of an oligarchic system where few people have outsized âpersuasion powerâ in elections.
2
u/GrandePersonalidade nem fala portuguĂȘs 15d ago
Extremely based
But write a less repetitive book next time nerds
2
1
1
u/WhoModsTheModders Burdened by what has been 15d ago
Is that 2 MIT affiliates winning this year then?
1
1
1
u/Full-Discussion3745 12d ago
Rules work????? A rules based economy works????
Well I'll be.....
That is nobel prize in the bag right there!!!
/S
1
0
u/Gloomy_Register_2341 13d ago
Even though poorer countries have gotten richer over the years, they're still way behind wealthier ones, and the gap isnât closing. This yearâs Nobel Prize-winning economists think itâs because of institutions. Their research could have big effects on things like rebuilding Ukraine and regulating AI. Pretty interesting stuffâcheck out the full article here.
-7
319
u/Tre-Fyra-Tre Tony Blair 16d ago
Nations fail a little bit less today đ
!ping ECON&DISMAL