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This past Monday, The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was awarded.
"The what award?", you might ask. "Wasn't it the Nobel in Economics–as so many journalists report so many times?"
No.
Not a true Nobel Prize, the economic prize was established in 1968 when professional economists, in collusion with the Swedish National Bank, appropriated the Nobel name to affix undue authority to their work. Friedrich von Hayek, made the statement quoted above during his own acceptance of the prize in 1974–the sixth year it was awarded.
In 2020 the FauxNobel was awarded for advancing auction technology that helps Silicon Valley giants to colonize human attention.
Much like the Olympics, the Nobel Prize has been declining in broad public fanfare as media fatigue (driven by those auctions) continues to overwhelm human attention. But more insidiously, the appropriation by Sweden’s central bank has diminished the prestige of the original awards. Economists have monetized the prestige for their own market interests–to the detriment of the public trust. Whereas Sweden’s Nobel prizes were inherently valued as achievements, a media reference of a laureate today, can improve a headline’s auction performance–often aiding the spread of disinformation and fake news.
This year the prize was awarded to Claudia Goldin for her research uncovering the reasons for gender gaps in labor force participation and earnings. She is the third woman in over half a century to win the prize and the first woman to be honored solo.
While Goldin's work is deserving of recognition, the late feminist economist, Hazel Henderson, once noted that the FauxNobel significantly adds "to the veneer and hubris of the field of economics," a hubris that regardless of the merit of the contemporary work, reinforces economics as field that punishes creativity and allows itself to be weaponized for personal gain.
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