Medals, Prizes and Push and Pull Methods of Research Funding

|Peter Boettke|

Yesterday I discussed the much deserved winning of the Clark Medal for Esther Duflo of MIT.  There will no doubt be debates over who wins these recognitions and there is of course the broader debate over what is most effective the funding of the process of scientific discovery, or the prospect of big rewards for the actual discovery of a scientific contribution.  I am an advocate of scientific contests and the awarding of prizes for contributions.

Of the economists/political economists who have not yet won the Nobel Prize, who would be at the top of your list?

I would start with Alchian and Tullock, though they cannot be paired together to win.  But they would be followed closely by Baumol and Kirzner, who I think did more than any other economists to resurrect the focus on the entrepreneur in economic theory.  I think Alchian is the best price theorist not to win, Tullock the best political economist not to win, and Baumol and Kirzner the best theorists of the dynamic market economy not to have won.

But there is one other thinker who I would very much like to see win because I think he represents a style of thinking in economics which hopefully would be encouraged by an "October surprise" (a Lin Ostrom puts it) -- that is Albert Hirschman.  As readers of this blog know, I published a book on Vincent and Lin Ostrom (with my colleague Paul Aligica) last summer, right before Lin won her Nobel.  I have just started work on a new book where one of my teachers Kenneth Boulding and Albert Hirschman play central roles.  I am hoping to have a first draft of the manuscript done by the summer of 2011.  So I guess I am rooting for a four year plan, where Alchian wins, then Tullock the next year (he can share it with others in the rent-seeking or directly unproductive line of research, god knows the evidence supporting this insight of these thinkers is overwhelming), and then Baumol and Kirzner to share for entrepreneurship, and by that time my book should be done and out highlighting why Boulding and Hirschman should be held up as shining examples in political economy of the discourse we want to promote in the discipline to make progress rather than spin our wheels and get caught between free floating abstractions and momentary concretes.

Comments

[Jerry O'Driscoll]

Of all those Pete mentioned, Armen Alchian is clearly the economist who most deserves the prize but hasn't received it. He is also the most under-appeciated price theorist of the last century. UCLA had many dominant figures when I went there, but Alchian was first among equals.

Alchian's work price setting is seminal and I find many discussions on the issue vapid because participants aren't familiar with his work. He constitutes the alternative to Samuelson.

His work on uncertainty is the most important and original since Knight's. Austrians not familiar with it are poorer for it.

He co-authored an undergraduate economics text, University Economics, which the graduate students read before prelims because it was written at such a high level and reflected Alchian's approach. It was also the source of prelim questions. In turn, the teaching assiatants would pull prelim questions and take them into Econ. 1 classes as teaching material. It was tough to be an undergraduate in that department.

I actually took price theory and capital theory from Hirshleifer. When I wrote what I hoped would be my first full-length journal article, however, it was Alchian I gave it to for comments. I knew he'd be the toughest critic. He liked it and I sent it to Ronald Coase at the JLE. He published it essentially unchanged. That was the kind of preparation we got at UCLA.

[Jim Rose]

Jerry,

I agree that Alchian is a great economist.

His Noble prize faces the trip wire that the committee usually point to certain specific big contributions. Alchian made many but they were in smaller packages.

They say that Alchian published little yet he has a 1600 page collected works.

Alchian co-wrote three brilliant text books. A revised paperback edition of Universal Economics (2005) is supposed to be due out this year co-written by Alchian and Allison.

Kirzner and Tullock may have the same difficulty - writing mostly an incremental body of work.

Kirzner does have Competition and Entrepreneurship as his principal claim.

Tullock faced the extra disadvantage his crowning co-achievement, The Calculus of Consent, was cited on Buchanan’s prize. I found that to be most surprising because, as I recall, the preface of that book is explicit about which chapters are from which author and which were joint.

[Mark D. White]

One of the greatest compliments I've received in my career was from the late Ken Koford who, upon receiving very critical negative referee reports of a paper I submitted to the Eastern Economic Journal, nonetheless gave me a revise-and-resubmit because (as he said) he saw an Alchian-ish quality to the paper. (He eventually accepted and published it, which simply compounded the praise.)

[Current]

I think that the Nobel committee have shown their political direction in recent years. I doubt that any of the economists you mention will receive the prize.

[Rob]

I would add Paul Romer to the list, maybe Avandish Dixit too.

[Greg Ransom]

Bruce Caldwell and Philip Mirowski deserve a Nobel for using the great tradition of economic science in its historical development to rethink the very science of economics itself -- more profound work than that produced by many Nobel winners.

[Greg Ransom]

It's a scientific tragedy that out of print textbooks are made available free in electronic form.

[Renaud Fillieule]

"Of the economists/political economists who have not yet won the Nobel Prize, who would be at the top of your list?"

Raymond Boudon. Admittedly he is not an economist, but he is the one who has written the most perceptive and illuminating works about rationality (among his other notable contributions: mobility and inequalities, unintended consequences of social action, methodological individualism, and social change).

[Renaud Fillieule]

Raymond Boudon is a French sociologist, by the way, and deserves to be widely known among Austrian economists.

[topills.com review]

Government-back-stopped investment banks behaving like hedge funds on the taxpayer dime have given capitalism a pretty bad rep lately.