Nobel

Why, exactly, is there a Nobel prize in economics and not, say, in mathematics? Not only is it incorrect to say economics is a science; it is palpably false (comical, even) to call it a social science. Economics quite clearly eschews the very notion of the social and is complicit, as a doctrine, in furthering policies (or at least providing the intellectual support to policies) that radically alter our relation to both other people and to the natural world.

Hayek:  

'If I had been consulted whether to establish a Nobel Prize in economics, I should have decidedly advised against it… 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 size 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 conferring 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".'

~

The actual lecture (that was from the banquet speech, by the way) is also very interesting. 

The photograph is of Maryam Mirzakhani, who just won the Fields Medal.