Juliette Sellgren, a senior and economics main on the College of Virginia, has a podcast titled “The Nice Antidote.” In October, she interviewed me concerning the winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics: Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson. She contacted me as a result of I wrote, as I’ve completed in most years since 1996, the Wall Avenue Journal op/ed on the winners’ contributions to financial considering. It’s “A Nobel Prize in Economics for the ‘Inclusive’ Free Market,” Wall Avenue Journal, October 14, 2024. The WSJ piece is gated however I’ll be capable to submit it right here in a few days.
Juliette does an excellent job. It reveals what somebody with data of economics and curiosity can do.
Right here’s the episode and its house at our sister web site, AdamSmithWorks.
And right here, with some approximate time stamps, are the problems we mentioned.
1:21: A bit of recommendation that I might give my youthful self.
3:02: Juliette’s response–the bimodal distribution of scholars asking, or not asking, for assist.
5:55: This 12 months’s Nobel Prize was given for an essential matter moderately than for one thing that’s “technically candy.”
7:15: My course of for researching and writing the op/ed in about 7 hours.
9:15: Why I want the prize had been awarded to Doug Irwin and Jagdish Bhagwati.
11:58: Summarizing the work of the three economists and difficult their view that democracy is essential. (Which doesn’t imply that I’m not a fan of democracy.)
15:22: Acemoglu’s unjustified perception in industrial coverage.
16:20: Acemoglu doesn’t get Hayek’s info drawback and doesn’t get the motivation drawback in politics.
18:30: Acemoglu’s and Robinson’s unbelievable ignorance concerning the robber barons.
22:09: Why it’s arduous to generalize about how the Nobel committee thinks and decides.
25:34: The place this 12 months’s prize suits within the rating; Arnold Harberger and Thomas Sowell ought to get it; and Armen Alchian, Harold Demsetz, and William Baumol ought to have gotten it.
28:54: The position of Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck in awarding prizes to free-market oriented economists.
31:21: Why you shouldn’t prepare your profession to maximise your likelihood of profitable a Nobel Prize.
33:25: Paul Samuelson’s view that Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises deserved the prize.
39:12: A candy story about Claudia Goldin as she labored on her Ph.D. dissertation.
41:15: We should always write and speak about essential points. And the relevance of Thomas Sowell’s work for judging the declare that the federal authorities despatched lots of people to Springfield, Ohio.
44:29: What I’m engaged on to enhance myself.
Notes:
My guide evaluation of Why Nations Fail is “The Wealth–and Poverty–of Nations,” Regulation, Spring 2013.
My evaluation, for Liberty Fund, of a guide on Assar Lindbeck’s position within the Nobel Prize, is “The Nobel Issue: What Does the Prize Reward?” Econlib, April 5, 2021.
I did an article for Econlib on the so-called robber barons. It’s “The Robber Barons: Neither Robbers nor Barons,” Econlib, March 4, 2013.
