Comment by 9oliYQjP | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 9oliYQjP | Hacker News Reader

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To be fair it's not a real Nobel prize. It's paid for by a bank and it was first issued in 1968. One of Nobel's descendants is on record speculating that Nobel would never have agreed to the award. It's very much about public relations for the field of economics. The field's effect on the world has been to undermine democratic governments through the establishment of treaties that people never voted for and organizations comprised of people who were never elected. Governments merely act as middle managers to the "market" and their role is to keep their people within the constraints of these supposed universal truths. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics Science is a way for the field to convey prestige, expertise, and authority.

My personal take is that the field is stuck in an existential local minima and are self-conscious about it: similar to how astronomy was stuck on the model of concentric spheres. I think everybody who practices the field is unconsciously aware of it too which is why they lean on hand-waving charts and opaque math that anybody in a harder science would instinctively call bullshit on. How psychology got to be the poster boy for the replication crisis in the social sciences and not economics is baffling given the scope and depth of influence the field has had on the world.

But don't take my word for it... https://academic.oup.com/ej/article-abstract/127/605/F236/50...

  We investigate two critical dimensions of the credibility of empirical economics research: statistical power and bias. We survey 159 empirical economics literatures that draw upon 64,076 estimates of economic parameters reported in more than 6,700 empirical studies. Half of the research areas have nearly 90% of their results under‐powered. The median statistical power is 18%, or less. A simple weighted average of those reported results that are adequately powered (power ≥ 80%) reveals that nearly 80% of the reported effects in these empirical economics literatures are exaggerated; typically, by a factor of two and with one‐third inflated by a factor of four or more.

> I think everybody who practices the field is unconsciously aware of it too which is why they lean on hand-waving charts and opaque math that anybody in a harder science would instinctively call bullshit on.

Hand-waving charts are how the subject is taught to indifferent undergraduates. And the charts aren’t hand waving, though they may seem like it when the undergraduates don’t understand. (Source: “hand-waving” chart using economics professor, though I do my best to help them understand.)

Research as practiced in university departments does not rely on “hand waving charts.” You’ve probably never been to a research seminar in economics. It is all about how parameters in a model are identified.

Whether “the math is opaque” I cannot say. Is it more opaque than computer science? Or math in math departments?

If you can find a simple, not opaque way to do the same, the world’s macroeconomists will beat a path to your door to learn from you. They’ll even nominate you for their fake Nobel. You can refuse it if your conscience (or the sprit of Alfred Nobel!) demands it, but like all Nobel prizes it comes with a cash reward.

Also... no one in the field cares that it’s the “bank of Sweden memorial prize in honor of Alfred Nobel”. Make it just the “bank of Sweden economics prize” and we’ll still be excited about it. We could care less that it has Nobel’s name on it.

The paper you cite is published in... an economics journal! And it is not the only one on the topic. We are aware that the standards for empirical work may need to be higher. Indeed, this is the second time in thirty years we have come to that conclusion. This problem is not unique to economics.

Unrelated, but I’m curious why people say “could care less” - don’t you mean “couldn’t”?

Fair point.

Maybe I shouldn't speak for all of us: probably some actually could care less than they do, while maybe others couldn't care less.

I am in the "couldn't care less" camp. Call the prize whatever you want.

it was a joke...

I was piling on but could have done a better job with the opening statement to articulate this, yes. I’ll take every opportunity to point out the Nobel prize issue because I think it has created real harm. The equity of the real Nobel prizes is being exploited to gloss over alarming gaps in the field. These gaps have led to real harm and yet they’re jokingly dismissed.

Some of the smartest people in the field are actively trying to obscure its limitations. The author of this article is more modest but even still it’s a PR rebuttal and a bullshit fear tactic: a “You know what? Things are really bad but what would be worse is if you didn’t listen to us”.

To paraphrase a hedge fund manager speaking on a panel I was watching a while back "The Nobel Prize in Economics has done more damage to the world than the atomic bomb"

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