Nobel-winning Economist Says U.S. Headed for Recession The Business Review "I think the news is increasingly bad," said Robert Engle, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2003. "I've been optimistic that the performance of the export sectors are going to keep us from a recession, but the housing market continues to disappoint and I suppose we are likely to have a recession. But I don't think it's going to be a really serious recession."
Why Barrack Obama Ought to Win the Bleeding Nobel Peace Prize Niagara Falls Reporter Throughout the endless debates and Sunday morning gabfests, the reporters and pundits who grill the candidates usually don't frame questions about the war in Iraq with the stark premise that it is a mistake and people continue to die for a futile cause.
Nobel Prize Winner Explains His Research The Crimson White 2007 Nobel Prize winner Albert Fert, a physicist and professor at the Université Paris-Sud in France, spoke about his work on spintronics and his discovery that led to the development of the iPod and other electronic advancements.
March 25, 2008
With the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winners firmly in the books, you might be wondering why you don't hear anything about the "losers."
After all, knowing the top vote-getters would give us a chance to throw some light on their achievements, maybe set some research priorities, which might just benefit mankind. Turns out that mankind will have to wait. Any information about the nominations and the nominators for the Peace Prize, or any Nobel, for that matter, is not to be disclosed, publicly or privately, for a period of 50 years.
I didn't make that up. It's right on the Nobel Peace Prize website. Where you can learn, among other things, how to nominate a candidate - in case you have someone in mind. What isn't explained is why the nominees are hidden for 50 years. Which leaves us rabble-rousers to speculate as to why those names aren't made available to the public until it won't matter.
Ever since Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, left provisions in his will for the creation of the prize that bears his name, secrecy has been at its heart. The party line is that by focusing only on the winners, the prestige of the prize is protected. Since public outcry might result if the disgruntled non-winners were able to plead their cases. And then you wouldn't be talking about the winners, but the losers.
Case in point is the debate that might have ensued if the public had been aware that Mahatma Gandhi, who never received the Nobel Peace Prize, was nominated for it five times between 1937 and 1948. The Nobel Committee may have tacitly acknowledged its error, however, when in 1948 (the year of Gandhi's death), it made no award, saying, "there was no suitable living candidate" though they awarded the prize posthumously to fellow Scandinavian Dag Hammarskjöld in 1961.
Selecting a winner has never exactly been a democratic process. The five members of the nominating committee are all Norwegians, all selected by the Norwegian Parliament. Outside consultation is explicitly forbidden to avoid the potential taint of politics. So is access to any reasoning that would explain what went into determining the eventual laureate.
The curious can go to the Nomination Database spanning the years 1901-55. I put in 1939, for instance, and found that Neville Chamberlain was nominated several times for his contribution to the Munich Agreement, which later proved to be more about appeasement than peace.
So what are we to make of all this? Does secrecy get in the way of selecting the "right" winner? Would the winner be more - or less - impressive if we knew what criteria was used to select them? Would we avoid winners like Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, who declined it, if there was more transparency? In attempting to thwart controversy, is the nominating committee actually creating more of it?
Questions to ponder, certainly. Does anyone have any answers?
What Is the Nobel Prize? Tallpoppies.net Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist. He invented dynamite and became very wealthy. When he died he left more than nine million dollars of his fortune to set up the Nobel prizes.
Dear Al: It's Time to Put That Nobel Prize to Work Huffington Post Here's what needs to happen: immediately after the Mississippi primary on Tuesday, both candidates must be called to Washington for a sit-down at the DNC. The convener of this gathering is Chairman Howard Dean, but the actual host is former Vice President (and new Nobel Peace Prize winner) Al Gore.
Nobel Prize Winner Retracts Study eCanadaNow Nobel Prize winner Linda B. Buck, whow as the co-winner of the 2004 prize for Physiology or Medicine, has retracted the study in a 2001 paper in the journal Nature.
I never knew that for 50 years it's a secret as to who the panel considered awarding the prizes t...
— rings90
March 25, 2008 4:56 PM
Who was more deserving of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize?
0% 0% 0% 13% 88%
You bring up some very interesting and disturbing points.
It's quite disturbing that Chamberlain was nominated several times. It must have impressed the Nobel committee that he held up a paper with Hitler's signature and said "peace in our time". But no one thought to nominate Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin for bringing the Axis Powers to their knees and creating a lasting peace for 63 years. Europe has been at peace for 63 years, the longest period in 2,000 years. Japan and the Allies have not engaged in war for the same 63 year period of time.
As a veteran of the Vietnam War, I'm at a loss as to Kissinger and Le Duc Tho having been nominated and chosen. And at the risk of sounding political (which I'm not). I'm also at a loss as to Al Gore's qualifications for the Nobel prize.
You have raised a serious issue. Thanks. I'm looking forward to reading all the posts, pro and con, on the subject. This site has the most insightful writers whether one agrees or not. All are worthy of consideration.
an Œconomist said...
I would note that Rob Engel, Prize winner noted in the sidebar, won the Prize not so much as an economists as a statistical theorist. Even in the '90s (and still to-day in all probability) Engel was using the IS/LM model as if it were credible macroeconomics, when it had long been abandoned by most macroeconomists for any purpose other than being something easy to teach lower-level undergraduate courses. Talk to Professor Engel if you want to know about autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity, but talk to someone else if you want a best guess on what the economy is going to do.
jmr said...
Another thought-provoking topic. Keep it up and I'll never get any work done. Who knew there was such controversy in this arena?
rings90 said...
I never knew that for 50 years it's a secret as to who the panel considered awarding the prizes too. I do agree though in this day & age it would be more about people finding some dirt on the perosn who won so their nominee would have looked better.
What great foresight Nobel had in making this provision.
Also find it extremely disturbing that Chamberlain was nominated multiple times. Can't quite figure what he actually did besides give Hitler the go ahead to take whatever he wanted.
more on the honor rollan Œconomist said...
rings90--
It is said that generals "are always fighting the last war", which is to say that their strategy and tactics are designed thinking in terms of the previous war. Before generals fight the previous war, politicians try to avoid the previous war. Which is to say that many of the policies that led to WW2, including Chamberlain's appeasement, were attempts to avoid the cascade that led to WWI. Of course, that cascade was a result of attempts to avoid a war like the immediately previous major war, and that one was made possible by attempts to avoid anything like the one before it.
Chamberlain's nominations were obviously premature. And we've seen quite a few premature awards.