Price of the Bank of Sweden in economic scenes in memory of Alfred Nobel

The price of the Bank of Sweden in economic scenes in memory of Alfred Nobel (in Swedish: Sveriges Riksbanks taken I ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels undermines ), known as “Nobel Prize” of economy , reward each year of the exceptional contributions in economy. It was founded in 1968 and equipped by the Banque with Sweden, at the time of its 300e birthday. It was decreed for the first time in 1969.

It is the only price managed by the Fondation Nobel which was not rested by the will of Alfred Nobel; he follows the same rules as the Nobel Prize. Like they, it is given the December 10th by the king of Sweden; like the prices of physics and chemistry, it is decreed by the royal Académie of sciences of Sweden. In 2006, the monetary part of the price is of 10 million Swedish crowns, that is to say approximately a million Euro S.

Origin

The idea of a new “Nobel Prize” comes from Per Åsbrink, governor of the Banque of the Sweden ( Sveriges Riksbank ), oldest Central bank of the world. Within the framework it preparation of tercentenary of the Bank, it creates a foundation for research, the Foundation of the jubilee of the Bank of Sweden ( Riksbankens Jubileumsfond ), and proposes with its economic council, Assar Lindbeck, like with the economists Erik Lundberg and Gunnar Myrdal, to think of the development of a price.

The Bank contacts then the Fondation Nobel, and the royal Académie of sciences of Sweden, which was already responsible for the attribution of the prices for physics and chemistry. Certain members of the Academy issue reserves as for the sufficiently scientific aspect of the economy, but Lundberg and especially Myrdal (which are also members) end up convincing the whole Academy. In May 1968, the central bank, the Nobel Foundation and the Academy fall from agreement on the rules of attribution of the price, and the office of the Central bank then decides to found it officially.

These rules are codified by the Swedish government in January 1969.

The first committee is composed of:

Choice of the prizes winner

Each year, the royal Academy of sciences of Sweden invites personalities qualified to send their nominations. These people include/understand:
  • members of the Academy of Science;
  • members of the selection committee of the price;
  • last prizes winner;
  • full professors in the subjects concerned, in Sweden, like with the Denmark, in Finland, Iceland, and Norway;
  • full professors of corresponding pulpits in at least six selected universities each year by the Academy;
  • of other researchers invited by the Academy.

Two to three hundred nominations are sent, which correspond to a hundred distinct candidates. The candidatures are then evaluated by a committee from five to eight members (including two not-economists), who subjects his choice to the department of social sciences of the Academy for approval. The whole Academy adopts the final list at the beginning of October.

As for the other Nobel Prize, a maximum of three people can share the price, and they must be alive at the time of the advertisement.

A sometimes disputed price

Whereas the attribution of the Nobel Prize of peace often gives place to controversies as for the choice of the prizes winner, the price of the Bank of Sweden is for its part primarily disputed for its relevance even, initially because the correspondence of Alfred Nobel never mentions its intention to reward this discipline - what underlines in particular since 2001 Peter Nobel, his great-grand-nephew, old Médiateur Swedish with immigration and former president of the Swedish Croix-Rouge. For certain economists, the purpose of these criticisms are also to deny any scientificity with the economic speech.

Friedrich Hayek, representing liberal Austrian School of economy and prize winner in 1974, declared in addition whom if one had asked him for his opinion on the price, it “would firmly have disadvised” his creation. Gunnar Myrdal, its Co-prize winner, declared to him that the price was to be abolished because it had been given to “reactionaries” like Hayek.

The choice of the prizes winner is him also criticized, to have often supported “orthodoxe” economists (of which those of the school of Chicago) or American. The Nobel Prize of physiology or medicine, where the American domination is marked even, does not undergo curiously these criticisms.

If, in the first years of its existence, the price rewarded for the theorists of foreground, it was also criticized to cover a discipline which, once the large economists of the years 1970 and 1980 rewards, perhaps missed field to justify the annual handing-over of a price supposed to reward for the essential projections. Thus, according to an anonymous economist of the beginning of the year 1980, “all the large fir trees fell, it remains only shrubs. ”

The royal academy of sciences decided in 1995 to extend the field of application of the price, on the one hand by modifying the composition of the selection committee (two not-economists out of the five to eight members), on the other hand by accepting the candidatures concerned with the Political sciences, the Psychologie, or the Sociologie, having an impact on the economy. Thus, among the recent prizes winner, Daniel Kahneman, Robert J. Aumann and Thomas C. Schelling is not economists.

The price of the Bank of Sweden in economic scenes in memory of Alfred Nobel remains however a major crowning for the majority of the economists, because médiatisée of the rewards which are given to them.

Statistics

Distribution of the prices according to the nationality of the prizes winner at the time of the reward (2007)

Many rewards (2007)

  • Total of the Nobel Prize: 39

    • individual Reward: 21
    • Reward shared to 2: 14
    • Récompense shared to 3: 4
  • Total of the rewarded economists: 61

University of affiliation of the researchers at the time of the reward (2002)

List prizes winner

Years 1960 - Years 1970 - Years 1980 - Years 1990 - Years 2000

Years 1960

Years 1970

Years 1980

Years 1990

Years 2000

See too

External bonds

Prizes winner and their biography

  • Official list of the prizes winner
  • Cards on the prizes winner realized by economic Problems (French Documentation)

Controversies around the price

  • Hazel Henderson, '' Nobel Prize of economy - imposture '', diplomatic Le Monde, February 2005
  • History of the price of the bank of Sweden, controversies and statistical
  • } Sylvia Nasar '' The Sometimes Dismal Nobel Prize in Economics '', The NewYork Times, October 13rd, 2001.
Gilles Dostaler, " The 'Nobel Prize of économie": skilful a mystification" , Economic Alternatives, No 238, July-August 2005, 88-91.

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