Balkinization  

Monday, October 13, 2008

The Royal Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel

Mark Tushnet

OK, I'll offer a deal to all law-and-economics sorts:  Lefties will refrain from saying, "As Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman points out in the New York Times, ..." if they will refrain from saying, "Nobel Prize winner [Gary Becker, Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, fill in the blanks at will] pointed out [in some commentary not organically connected to the work for which the named person received the prize] that ..."  But maybe no such deal is possible because the market in question doesn't work all that well -- because nobody can commit the entire group to the deal.

Comments:

Don't forget that we'll have to refrain from saying "Nobel winner Robert Mundell," too!
 

I'll consider that deal if we can get a moratorium on Mark Tushnet writing in parentheticals and subordinate clauses.
 

You know, that's the problem with language - you knew perfectly well (I assume) what you were trying to say, but for some reason it made little or no sense to me. Perhaps I'm unusually dense. Or, perhaps, your thoughts did not translate sufficently clearly into words.
 

How about a moratorium on law professors from both ends of the political spectrum pretending that their political beliefs are "THE LAW" and that therefore the political beliefs of Harvard law professors are somehow weightier, because they are the law, than those of any other citizen? In this case, I am afraid, the deal fails because of grossly disparate consideration: the number of right-wing law professors is so tiny that no one on the left would take this offer.
 

How about using the accurate, although fun spoiling, "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel," and adding the qualification that its not really associated with the prize given out to say, Richard Feynman, or James Watson.

I don't mean to slam Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, but it doesn't seem cool to me to put their work into the same kind of category as the work done by Lorentz or Einstein.

Friedman and the rest just aren't in the same league as Watson and Crick.
 

Peter:

Friedman and the rest just aren't in the same league as Watson and Crick.

What about John Forbes Nash?

BTW, I've often been curious as to why no Nobel in mathematics, but there is the Fields medal....

Cheers,
 

The story I heard was that Nobel's wife had an affair with a mathematician, but maybe that's apocryphal.
 

Personally, I like the fact that the equivalent prize for mathematics is the Fields Medal.
 

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