Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2024

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2024/press-release/

by hdvr • 2 years ago

97 88 2 years ago

EugeneG• 2 years ago

Which is why the pro-Trump tech folks are playing with fire. Exchanging potentially faster approvals/lower regulation for favored projects, for an environment where rule of law and institutions are weakened.

pavlov• 2 years ago

The pro-Trump tech folks are 90% about crypto. It's single-issue politics, like abortion or gun rights.

Scratch the surface on a SV Trump supporter like Marc Andreessen, and you'll find a big bag of crypto that they want to keep dumping on retail investors.

lokar3• 2 years ago

It’s not really about crypto. It just self interest.

superidiot1932• 2 years ago

Which crypto Bill Ackman is trying to dump on retail?

lokar3• 2 years ago

The slow and messy process of reaching consensus (or close) via a complex web of institutions help “western” (in the sense that Kotkin uses) societies avoid really bad policy and adapt to mistakes.

Some people are frustrated by this and think it would be much better to substitute their judgment for this process. They don’t necessarily hold this view selfishly or maliciously, they are just short sighted.

AnimalMuppet3• 2 years ago

Yes. Their judgment. Everyone else gets to shut up and take it. It's a very selfish view, whether or not they are consciously selfish about it.

whimsicalism2• 2 years ago

More rules doesn’t mean stronger rule of law.

Having lots of weakly enforced or discretionary laws is net worse for rule of law and a stable non-corrupt society.

renewiltord• 2 years ago

More law, better regulation comes from the same school as more code, better product. It’s obviously bullshit but novice practitioners and non-practitioners support the idea because they think all problems are solvable with more something.

jhp123• 2 years ago

you've misread the comment, weakened rule of law and lesser regulations are two different things that (according to the comment) are being exchanged. For example firing Comey had nothing to do with regulations.

hhs• 2 years ago

If interested, this page has context: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2024/pop...

cjalmeida2• 2 years ago

I strongly recommend Acemoglu, Robinson classic book "Why Nations Fail"

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/d...

It's very accessible, no economics background required. Along with Krugman and Kahneman, one of the few economics scholars that take the time to write a book for layman.

alephnerd4• 2 years ago

I also recommend Acemolgu's recent book "Power and Progress" on the relationship between labor and technology [0].

If you don't like reading, Acemoglu gave a talk about it at HKS recently [1]

[0] https://ig.ft.com/sites/business-book-award/books/2023/longl...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT0NzlATjf0

js8• 2 years ago

I read the summary from the review and I am not convinced that neoliberal US and EU have a less extractive governance structure than China has, as the authors seem to claim. It's been a decade since the book was published and China is still going strong. We will see.

dash2• 2 years ago

China has become more and more authoritarian under Xi, its GDP growth stats may be dodgy, and recently its housing bubble has popped big-style. It could go the way of Japan. I agree with your last sentence, all the same.

nabla94• 2 years ago

Not really:

https://data.worldbank.org/share/widget?contextual=aggregate...

CyberRymden3• 2 years ago

Do you actually think China has fairer courts, more open financial markets, and better business environment than the EU or US? For the longest time Hong Kong had to fill those gaps for China in order for the country to attract capital.

Regardless, even if China does today the explanation still holds considering China only transformed a few decades before the book was written.

jltsiren• 2 years ago

You have a short-term perspective. All kinds of governance structures can work for a single human lifetime, if they manage to get the right people to the right places. But those people will eventually retire and die. Good institutions make it more likely that their replacements will also be competent and have the right motivations and incentives.

PRC has enjoyed ~45 years of stability and economic growth under four leaders. Until now, the leaders have retired voluntarily, and there has been an ordered transition of power to the successor. But Xi Jinping is clinging to power in a way his predecessors didn't. If he stays beyond 2027, it will be interesting to see if China can survive his death.

Eumenes2• 2 years ago

Krugman

Not sure I'd spend time on a Krugman book. He predicted in 1998 that the internet would cease having an economic impact by 2005 and that it would be no greater than fax machines. He's like the Neil deGrasse Tyson of economics.

CyberRymden3• 2 years ago

Krugman is controversial at times, but he is a serious economist. The quote is also taken out of two important contexts. 1. It was not a serious academic prediction but rather part of a fluff piece by the Times about future precitions. 2. The quote also exists in the context of a debate that was raging during the advent of the internet whether or not the internet would hyper charge productivity and economic growth. In hindsight, especially after the late 1990s, the truth is far closer to the fax machine rather than a new era of prosperity. The lack of visible productivity growth from a technology that has so visibly transformed our society is one of the bigger questions in economics today.

ninjagoo2• 2 years ago

He predicted in 1998 that the internet would cease having an economic impact by 2005 and that it would be no greater than fax machines

The future is hard to predict. Using that as a reason to discount a Nobel-prize economist's economics-related work sounds like a gap in logic.

fekunde• 2 years ago

After reading "Why Nations Fail", which I really enjoyed, I wondered whether we could develop an LLM with a wide enough context window where I could input the lessons from such books along with data and metrics about a specific country. Then, the AI could prescribe tangible solutions and policy recommendations tailored to that nation's unique situation. I'm curious what an AI system like that might look like. I also wonder if it's possible to experiment with a smaller-scale version of this concept using today's technology.

JetSpiegel3• 2 years ago

I thought the Chicago School had already proved blindly applying "policy recommendations" from on high was a receipt for disaster and misery, but sure, let's do the same with AI, this time it will surely work.

nradov2• 2 years ago

What's the point? We generally know what economic policies work. But they aren't put into effect due to ideology or special interests. This isn't a problem with a technical solution.

omnee• 2 years ago

The rule of law is a key part of a nations success as argued by AJR. A very good exposition for the layman on the rule of law provided by Tom Bingham in the eponymous 'The Rule of Law):https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7734691-the-rule-of-law

While the above is informed by the UK's constitutional arrangement, the 8 principles are near universal when considering nations that have or aim for The Rule of Law.

The principles are:

(1) The law must be accessible and so far as possible intelligible, clear and predictable.

(2) Questions of legal right and liability should ordinarily be resolved by application of the law and not the exercise of discretion.

(3) The laws of the land should apply equally to all, save to the extent that objective differences justify differentiation.

(4) Ministers and public officers at all levels must exercise the powers conferred on them in good faith, fairly, for the purpose for which the powers were conferred, without exceeding the limits of such powers and not unreasonably.

(5) The law must afford adequate protection of fundamental human rights.

(6) Means must be provided for resolving, without prohibitive cost or inordinate delay, bona fide civil disputes which the parties themselves are unable to resolve.

(7) The adjudicative procedures provided by the state should be fair.

(8) The rule of law requires compliance by the state with its obligations in international law as in national law.

nabla94• 2 years ago

Well deserved. Acemoglu is the economist everyone respects.

Very technical, but not for the sake of mathiness. His models have a meaning. They clarify thought and ideas. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=l9Or8EMAAAAJ&hl=en

NeutralForest• 2 years ago

Very cool to see public econ and history of economics represented! On top of the popular release, there's usually some advanced background info (https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2024/10/advanced-economic...) which is admittedly pretty massive but gives a lot of background about the Prize.

doodlebugging• 2 years ago

Seems like one conclusion that can be drawn is that the indigenous people who get colonized should just shut up and enjoy their new reservations. The political, societal, and economic benefits of colonization were not intended to help them. Those changes were only to help those who did the colonizing build a new society that was free from the institutions that prevented them having a voice in how they were able to conduct their lives back in the old (European monarchy) country. Shit rolled downhill in the new country and the oppressed became the oppressor.

It worked out in the end though for those who survived since they now have representative government with members elected who are beholden to the people and who remember the main lesson of the past - grassroots organization against oppression is the only tool that works to preserve freedom for the majority of the people in a country.

sameoldtune• 2 years ago

Well it’s kind of a moot point if we only care about “those who survive”.

whimsicalism2• 2 years ago

i don’t fully understand your post, but I don’t think

“grassroots organization against oppression is the only tool that works to preserve freedom for the majority of the people in a country”

is a good takeaway for native americans and i struggle to imagine a counterfactual where native americans having this knowledge at the start of colonization would make any significant difference to the course of events

inglor_cz2• 2 years ago

In most settler-colonial situations during history, unless strict separation between races and nations was maintained, the conquerors intermingled with the conquered so thoroughly that you cannot tell them apart nowadays (Who is a Norman and who is an Anglo-Saxon? Who is a Roman and who is a Celt?). That included a lot of Amerindians in the US.

This is pretty much the norm across the ages. You could probably say that it is wise from the vanquished to adapt at least partially the culture of the conquerors; after all, it might be better suited for victories in wars, and that was a major factor in survival until recently. (In some places, still is.)

alephnerd4• 2 years ago

Seems like one conclusion that can be drawn is that the indigenous people who get colonized should just shut up and enjoy their new reservations

Colonial institutions ARE extractive.

This is a fairly prominent point in Acemoglu, Simon, and Robinson's works.

CyberRymden3• 2 years ago

Their seminal book literally opens with explaining how most colonial institutions were created to extract the wealth of natives and slaves, institutions that live on today through the authoritarian regimes that inherited them.

AlbertCory5• 2 years ago

indigenous people who get colonized

Academic talking points. Talk about the indigenous Irish who got "colonized" by the Celts, or the Britons who got "colonized" by the Saxons, Danes, and Normans, or the native American tribes who got "colonized" by other tribes, or the Gauls who got "colonized" by migrant tribes.

The fact is, everyone is on "stolen land" including the "indigenous." The Spaniards were more exploitive than the English and other northern Europeans (look up "Potosi"), but that doesn't make the latter perfect.

The New World was going to be integrated with the Old World sooner or later, no matter who did it.

zxcb1• 2 years ago

I, for one, am waiting for the field of economics to be colonized by AI folks

kome• 2 years ago

Terrible decision. Very bad and sloppy economics, a simplified version of what sociology and political science have been doing much better for over 40 years, as if before these crucial contributions we had no idea that institutions, forms of power and social conflict affect economic outcomes.

Branko Milanovic has aptly and rather amusingly defined Acemoglu's naive theorizing as "Wikipedia entries with regressions" https://glineq.blogspot.com/2014/08/my-take-on-acemoglu-robi... and he is right.

Acemoglu's strand of institutional social science is known to be painfully racist and clueless about realities on the ground https://africasacountry.com/2016/09/africa-why-western-econo... The narrative that you can get economic growth with "good institutions" is a fable, and cases like China are also completely outside their narrative. Not only is their narrative historically inaccurate, if not ideological, it can't explain why Western economies like the US have prospered despite being as corrupt as China is today.

alephnerd4• 2 years ago

defined Acemoglu's naive theorizing

It sounds like you are parroting arguments without explaining those arguments.

"Wikipedia entries with regressions" is a facile argument that can be applied to Picketty and Milanovic as well.

Plus, Milanovic congratulated AJR and agreed to a number of their initial works in the space (which are the ones that won them the Nobel)

The narrative that you can get economic growth with "good institutions" is a fable

Bullshit. We don't invest in Uganda or Kenya because we know we won't be able to get a contract enforced.

A major reason FDI to PRC skyrocketed in the 2000s was because individual provinces worked on building SEZs with ease of contract enforcement, as well as a number of harmonizing business regulation reforms (eg. the Guiding Cases Project).

And that same FDI outflow from China that we are now seeing is due to the opaqueness that now permeates the judicial and regulatory environemnt in China after a number of backwards reforms in 2018-22.

it can't explain why Western economies like the US have prospered despite being as corrupt as China is today.

Over a century of major reforms and regulations.

This was a major reason why the PRC began the Guiding Cases project.

nabla94• 2 years ago

Here is what your boy Branko Milanovic says: https://x.com/BrankoMilan/status/1845850368221032590

Good decision. They deserve it. Obviously, there is a lot to disagree with in their work, but AJR initial papers were excellent, and broadened economic work to include politics and economic history. Congratulations!

blackhawkC177• 2 years ago

There’s nothing racist about stating that strong institutions and rule of law lead to economic success.

It’s an obvious truth, which many Africans reject for some reason. I’m Nigerian, and my country is a clear example of how excessive corruption and dependence on a natural resource (oil) makes a country mediocre.

alephnerd4• 2 years ago

Dan Rogger published an interesting paper 13 years ago digging into this from a Civil Service standpoint [0]

Some of the recommendations were implemented, but it's still very much a work in progress.

[0] https://www.danrogger.com/files/survey%20reports/Nigeria%20C...

AlbertCory5• 2 years ago

The "Nobel Prize in Economics" was not one of the original ones endowed by Alfred Nobel. As the name implies, it was created by a bank.

Is there any reason Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk can't endow a Prize in Computer Science? That would end the controversy about whether AI is "Physics."

kelseyfrog• 2 years ago

It's not even a non-original Nobel. It's simply "Not a Nobel Prize".

The headline should read "Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson won Not a Nobel Prize in Economics."

We shouldn't validate the idea that one can earn a Nobel in economics. It's simply not possible because such a prize does not exist. Shame on economists for attempting to legitimize economics using the memory of Alfred Nobel. It is low, even for them.

jldugger• 2 years ago

We already have the Turing Award, and a prize sponsored by Google.

doe_eyes2• 2 years ago

Is there any reason Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk can't endow a Prize in Computer Science?

Even without searching, I'm sure they back a number of organizations that do endow various awards, scholarships, and so on. I doubt they could come up with a "flagship" one that would be as prestigious as the Nobel Prize, though. Our attitudes toward modern-day "industrialists" and their pet projects are quite different today. Whatever controversies surround the Nobel Prize, they would be many times worse for the Bezos-Gates-Zuck-Musk Medal of Merit.

AlbertCory5• 2 years ago

This seems kinda confused. The Nobel is now controversial because after all, Nobel invented dynamite and he wanted to expunge his guilt. Yet you said it was "prestigious" -- but you want to cancel that, regardless?

But somehow the Nobel Prize in Computer Science would be too controversial even given all that.

OK, I get that you don't like Bezos-Gates-Zuck-Musk. Maybe you're just jealous.

blackhawkC177• 2 years ago

The Breakthrough Prize, renowned as the “Oscars of Science”, recognizes the world’s top scientists working in the fundamental sciences – the disciplines that ask the biggest questions and find the deepest explanations.
Each prize is $3 million and presented in the fields of Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics and Mathematics.
The Breakthrough Prizes were founded by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki. The Prizes have been sponsored by the personal foundations established by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Ma Huateng, Jack Ma, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki.

https://breakthroughprize.org/About

nabla94• 2 years ago

Not being the original does not make it any less meaningful. Repeating the same "Not real Nobel" spiel every time Nobel price in Economics is discussed as it is some kind of refutation is silly.

Is there any reason

Yes there is. Nobel committee has accepted Nobel in economics as one of the Nobel prices. Its in their website, in their documents and its given out in the same ceremony in Stockholm. Laureates are selected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

"created by a bank "

Sveriges Riksbank is the central bank of Sweden. It's not a just some random private bank.

hndamien• 2 years ago

Exactly, it is a central bank.

musicale• 2 years ago

Is CS even a real discipline when a physicist (or two) can win the Turing Award? /s

aanet• 2 years ago

Absolutely chuffed to hear that Daren Acemoglu (one of my fav econ writers), Simon Johnson and Robinson won the Nobel memorial prize.

Acemoglu has been a brilliant and prolific econ writer, and I enjoy his exposition. Many have commented on his "Why Nations Fail", and rightly so. More recently, he also wrote "Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity".

I'm more interested in his thoughts on tech and development (than on instituions and democracy), and he doesn't disappoint.

More topically for HN folks, he wrote on "The Simple Macroeconomics of AI" [1]. Unlike many contemporary researchers / writers (incl. Ethan Mollick) who are completely ga-ga over prospects of AI-driven economy over the next decade, Acemoglu is more reserved.

His top findings:

    Modest Productivity Gains: Estimates suggest TFP growth from AI will be less than 0.55% to 0.71% over 10 years, limited by the complexity of tasks.

    Hard vs. Easy Tasks: AI's impact on "hard-to-learn" tasks, which lack clear metrics and are context-sensitive, will likely produce smaller gains than on simpler tasks.

    Wage Effects: AI's productivity benefits may not substantially raise wages, particularly for low-skill workers.

    Inequality Impact: AI is unlikely to reduce labor income inequality significantly and may widen the gap between capital and labor incomes.

    Task Complementarity: AI could enhance productivity by complementing human workers, though benefits may be limited if task prices fall.

    Role of New Tasks: New AI-enabled tasks could boost productivity, but some may also create negative social value, such as manipulative content.

    Automation Limitations: Extensive-margin automation may not lead to substantial wage increases if displacement effects outweigh productivity benefits.

    Consumer Welfare: Increases in GDP may overstate consumer welfare improvements due to investment's impact on consumption.

    Capital-Labor Dynamics: AI's use may increase the capital share of income, further shifting income away from labor.

    Investment Response: AI-related productivity gains will likely trigger only modest capital stock increases.

[Caveat: above summary generated by ChatGPT, sorry!]

I'm cautious -- neither too optimistic (although the engineer in me wants to believe in the AI-driven future) nor too pessimistic (but I'm also very, very realistic in broad adoption and benefits dissemination of AI).

His recent chat with FT [2] is also illuminating (Sep 2024).

---

[1] https://economics.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2024-04/The%20... (Apr 2024)

[2] FT audio interview - https://www.ft.com/content/e865a777-501a-4417-839e-dffd4b520... (Sep 2024)

jncfhnb• 2 years ago

Wage Effects: AI's productivity benefits may not substantially raise wages, particularly for low-skill workers.

Yeah no shit. It’s going to spike them down hard.

Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2024

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