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

71 pointsposted 8 hours ago
by hdvr
(nobelprize.org)

73 Comments

cjalmeida

4 hours 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.

js8

4 hours 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

3 hours 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.

zorked

an hour ago

China is the #1 trading partner of nearly every country in the world. That's all you need to know about how bad they are doing.

MichaelZuo

3 hours ago

How do you know this?

I don’t want to single this out but tangible proof of a net increase in ‘authoritarian’ decision making, compared to say a decade ago, has never been posted on HN, as far as I know.

Most of the in depth analysis I’ve seen suggests that although enforcement actions have become stricter over the past decade, the actual number of new laws and regulations has gone down.

And more importantly, the number of contradictory laws and regulations (between central authorities, and between the centre and provinces) has gone way way down.

So there’s much less leeway to punish on a whim or trap someone in a double bind, compared to a decade ago. Which suggests a net decrease, if anything.

vlovich123

3 hours ago

It depends on if you’re talking about authoritarianism as it relates to the average person or the political and ruling class. There have been a lot of reports of Xi getting rid of a lot of potential adversaries when he announced himself ruler for life and the imprisonment of Jack Ma and stripping him of his wealth for making challenging statements against Xi seems pretty authoritarian.

MichaelZuo

3 hours ago

Does it makes sense to discuss it relative to the ‘political and ruling class’?

Since they pretty much all have party cards already. And the moment they give it up means they’re kicked out from any decision making, from what I understand.

Yes internal factions within the party can arbitrarily punish each other for made up reasons all day long, every day of the year.

So in a sense it was already authoritarian without limit.

But that’s not new, nor different from any other big political party.

vlovich123

2 hours ago

The kind of punishment authoritarian regimes dish out is much more severe in ways that you couldn’t do in the US (imprisonment, seizure of assets, death). In fact I’d argue it’s the only kind that matters. Authoritarian regimes rarely go after normal people unless they speak out actively against the government (which China does) and instead focus on controlling and censoring anyone in a position of power and let the implicit censoring of the entire population flow downstream from that.

cherryteastain

17 minutes ago

US does all the nasty crap China does. Less brazenly, but it's certainly there.

> imprisonment

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_cam...

The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a United States military prison...As of August 2024, at least 780 persons from 48 countries have been detained at the camp since its creation, of whom 740 had been transferred elsewhere, 9 died in custody, and 30 remain; only 16 detainees have ever been charged by the U.S. with criminal offenses.

> seizure of assets

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_Unit...

In the United States, civil forfeiture (also called civil asset forfeiture or civil judicial forfeiture)[1] is a process in which law enforcement officers take assets from people who are suspected of involvement with crime or illegal activity without necessarily charging the owners with wrongdoing...To get back the seized property, owners must prove it was not involved in criminal activity.

> death

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_Un...

> go after normal people unless they speak out actively against the government

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange

MichaelZuo

2 hours ago

If the party membership is revoked first, then the person wouldn’t be part of the ‘political and ruling class’ any longer.

Then they would just be a citizen who might formerly have been some bigshot, i.e. the second case.

It still doesn’t seem to make sense to discuss any increases relative to the first case, since in 2012 it was already unlimitedly authoritarian.

vlovich123

2 hours ago

Revoking party membership doesn’t mean much necessarily if you still wield influence and power. Imagine if Barack Obama or Bill Clinton were kicked out by Joe Biden trying to consolidate power. They’d still have a voice and be influential outside of their party membership. That’s why Xi needs to imprison his rivals and root them out beyond just revoking their membership. And again I’ll point you to the example made of Jack Ma who wasn’t in the political party except maybe nominally but had wealth. I think you’ve never lived under an authoritarian regime and never talked with people who lived under it to understand what life is like.

MichaelZuo

5 minutes ago

This is getting too into the weeds, of course individual situations can be analyzed, but this doesn’t apply to ‘the political and ruling class’ as a whole.

To be more precise in wording, the net increase, or decrease, in net negative authoritarian decision making is what matters for me and probably most HN readers.

Since this increase, or decrease, may be positive and negative to varying degrees for various people and factions, it’s practically impossible to tell if it’s net negative for the class as a whole.

inglor_cz

2 hours ago

The difference between oligarchy that deliberately maintains balance of power and interests between, say, dozens or hundreds of prominent players, and a one-man rule where the "courtiers" are just richer than an average citizen, but equally subjugated to the Dear Leader, is enormous.

Both Russia and China developed since 2000 from one to the other, and I wonder what the end game will be. In Russian case, the development led to re-establishment of the imperial idea and an attempt to conquer formerly held lands by force; that is something that the oligarchs wouldn't start, but a neo-Tsar absolutely did.

Communist China used to be way less externally aggressive than Russia / USSR, but I don't like the current military gestures by Xi. Not at all.

coliveira

an hour ago

In your mind, having an army to defend your country like China does is a crime... Better being like Japan that is defenseless against the very people who invaded them and continue there for 75 years.

cyberax

7 minutes ago

The problem is not the army, but military posturing. It can too easily transition into an actual war.

Case in point: Russia. Putin's ratings were falling, and he decided to commit "a small victorious war", based on faulty assumptions. And his assumptions were faulty because all the secret agencies were filled with yes-men who were just telling Putin what he wanted to hear.

That's the problem with the authoritarian regimes: they don't have people who can stop the Dear Leader if the Dear Leader starts seriously believing in conspiracy theories and/or just goes mad with power.

inglor_cz

an hour ago

You don't read my mind well if you think that I am against China defending itself. Most nations have an army for that purpose.

I am against China performing threatening exercises near Taiwan and against China claiming the majority of the South China Sea for themselves when hundreds of millions of other people live on its shores.

Ever heard of "the Nine Dashes"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dash_line

That has zilch to do with defense. That is expansionism, every bit as bad as its Western equivalents.

coliveira

an hour ago

Do you understand that it is called "South China Sea" for a reason right? There is no way China can defend itself without controlling their sea. Also Taiwan, although self-governed is literally not an independent country, so defending Taiwan against other countries is literally China's responsibility. That's all distorted by media but true nonetheless.

dash2

17 minutes ago

Clearly Taiwan does not want to be "defended" by China, but is rather desperately asking for defence against China. Also, the international court ruled against China's claim to control everything behind the 9-dash line. It's not true that China needs that line to defend itself - it has done so perfectly well since 1947 without it.

ninjagoo

an hour ago

> Do you understand that it is called "South China Sea" for a reason right?

So by this yardstick you're acknowledging that India has the right to control the entirety of the "Indian Ocean", correct?

And the same with the Sea of Japan, and that Inner Mongolia is really a part of Mongolia, not China?

:-)

SpicyLemonZest

43 minutes ago

Taiwan is literally an independent country, although they promote a policy of strategic vagueness about this in hopes that it will discourage China from launching an invasion. The arguments China makes for its ownership of Taiwan are no more defensible, and arguably less, than Portugal's justifications for maintaining ownership of Goa.

ninjagoo

29 minutes ago

Well, by the OP's naming standards, it's Taiwan (Republic of China) that is the primary entity, and they have the rights to all of China :-)

MichaelZuo

2 hours ago

So the degree of authoritarian decision making felt by ‘courtiers’ within the party can vary from year to year?

I guess that is possible, but if that’s the case, wouldn’t that naturally be their goal? To concentrate power and authority in one place, or person, that they can more readily manipulate.

feedforward

2 hours ago

People were saying when the PRC was founded 75 years ago it would collapse any day now. They were saying this during the cultural revolution. They were saying it earlier this year, as China sent a robot to the far side of the moon to collect moon rocks and bring them back to earth. And they're still saying it. I'm not holding my breath.

kiba

2 hours ago

Just because PRC didn't collapse doesn't mean PRC perform well. On the contrary, the current strength of PRC is probably a reversion to mean, what China would be like if it wasn't so mismanaged, and yet decades late from where they could be.

States can endure a lot of mismanagement. Look at North Korea for instance. What we won't know is when we hit the breaking point.

What is happening in Russia may lead to an eventual collapse, though unlikely. There are some signs of a loss of monopoly on violence as the system is pushed to its breaking point. Hopefully that won't happen, but it's a scary possibility nonetheless.

doctorpangloss

2 hours ago

There are HN posters with the ability to see hard data inside America's largest tech and manufacturing businesses, but don't investigate the question, "How much of what you buy every day was made in China?"

CyberRymden

3 hours 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.

Eumenes

2 hours 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.

CyberRymden

2 hours 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.

AlbertCory

an hour ago

> Krugman is controversial at times

Kind of like saying Lysenko was controversial at times.

He's not "controversial," he's just a bloviator. His credentials as a serious economist expired long ago when he signed up with the leftist team and agreed to never challenge them again, on anything.

When you have to spend many words on explaining the "context" in which someone's quotes should be viewed, you are losing.

cyberax

a few seconds ago

> Kind of like saying Lysenko was controversial at times.

This is BS. Krugman has very specific theories that made predictions validated by practice.

Remember 2008? He made a prediction that an increase in the monetary base wouldn't cause inflation. This prediction was spectacularly confirmed. He also made a case for fiscal intervention: it wouldn't cause inflation, and it would speed up the recovery. And his prediction again was confirmed.

More recently: he predicted that the inflation spike was transient, due to supply chain issues rather than fundamental changes. And he's again been vindicated.

ninjagoo

37 minutes ago

> His credentials as a serious economist expired long ago when he signed up with the leftist team

You might be (unpleasantly) surprised by the emphasis of the current year's nobel economics prize winners on the importance of societal institutions and the need for inclusivity to advance the wealth of nations :-)

AlbertCory

25 minutes ago

I'd be more surprised if you linked to any of Krugman's recent columns and I actually thought they were worthwhile.

AnimalMuppet

2 hours ago

The lack of visible productivity growth. In particular, it's not as visible as you expect in the GDP statistics.

Take TV Guide, for instance. Now, if anybody watches broadcast television, they can use the internet to find out what's on when. Is that better or worse for users than having a paper TV guide? In many ways it's better. But it shows up in the GDP as a negative, because nobody's buying TV Guide any more.

Or take Google. I can search for any information I want, for free. That creates immense value - immense in every sense except the GDP, where it doesn't show up at all, because it's free.

Wikipedia. Linux. gcc. The Wayback Machine. Even HN. All this is available to us, whenever we want it, for whatever purpose we want, for free. There's great value to us. Just nothing that shows up on the GDP statistics, because it's all free. (Yeah, I know, RedHat sells Linux, and Wikipedia asks for donations. They aren't Microsoft selling Windows and The World Book, though. You can still use them for free, and not get sued or jailed.)

kiba

2 hours ago

Sure, there's a lot of value. There's also a lot of slops and negative value. These days I don't even use wikipedia that much even though I googled things constantly.

GDP is a very gross measure of things to be sure, but also difficult to fake.

ninjagoo

41 minutes 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.

aanet

an hour 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)

AlbertCory

an hour 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."

blackhawkC17

6 minutes 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

kelseyfrog

37 minutes 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

35 minutes ago

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

doe_eyes

34 minutes 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.

AlbertCory

21 minutes 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.

doodlebugging

4 hours 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.

whimsicalism

3 hours 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

sameoldtune

3 hours ago

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

CyberRymden

2 hours 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.

AlbertCory

an hour 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.

alephnerd

2 hours 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.

inglor_cz

2 hours 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.)

kome

2 hours 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.

nabla9

2 hours 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!

blackhawkC17

2 hours 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.

alephnerd

2 hours 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.

EugeneG

5 hours 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.

whimsicalism

3 hours 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.

jhp123

2 hours 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.

renewiltord

2 hours 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.

lokar

4 hours 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.

AnimalMuppet

3 hours 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.

lokar

2 hours ago

I guess I agree. I tend to try to view others actions in best reasonable light, so I default to the idea that they are simply blind to their own limits, but mean well.

AnimalMuppet

2 hours ago

I guess I'd better assume the best about such people, given how easy it is for me to have the same attitude...

pavlov

4 hours 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.

lokar

4 hours ago

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

zxcb1

3 hours ago

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