The Prize That Even Some  Laureates Question
By Patricia Cohen

  Unlike  the original five prizes named  in Alfred Nobel’s will more  than a century ago,  the economics award—formally called  the Bank of Sweden Prize  in Economic Sciences  in Memory of Alfred Nobel—was created  in 1968 by  the nation’s central bank in honor of  its 300th  anniversary. But  it  isn’t  so much bloodlines that have stirred up dismay as the kind of work that has often been honored.
  “They’re not  engaged  in  the problems of  the  actual world,”  said  James K. Galbraith,  an  economist  at  the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at  the Univer-sity  of Texas  in Austin,   voicing  an  all-too-common complaint that much of the Nobel-anointed economic work seems out of touch with reality.
  Complaints about prize winners generally  fall  into one of  three categories:  too  ideological;  too preoccupied with theory and mathematics; or  too narrowly focused on prob-lems facing Wall Street instead of on pressing global issues like inequality, poverty and the environment.
  That’s not how Gary S. Becker—an economist at  the University of Chicago who won the 1992 prize for applying economic  theory  to  a wide  range  of  human  behavior, including crime and racial discrimination—sees  it. “People
have different judgments about what constitutes the biggest contribution,” he said, but he maintains that the winners “do refect the most important work in economics” and that the work being honored  is “useful  in understanding how soci-eties work”.
  Amartya Sen,  one  of  the  few winners whose work focuses on social welfare,  thought  the winners were “very worthy” of  the honor. He was particularly pleased  that  this week  the prize went  to Leonid Hurwicz, 90, and Roger B. Myerson  and Eric S. Maskin, both 56—three American economists who helped create and develop a sophisticated explanation of  the  interaction among  individuals, markets and institutions.
  The hard-science prizes were certainly  the model  for the newest Nobel. Yet  the notion  that economics  is scien-tifc, said Jeff Madrick, the director of policy research at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at  the New School in New York, is “highly exaggerated”.
  Mr. Madrick not only doubts  that significant contribu-tions  in  the field can be  limited  to  those based on econo-metrics but also questions whether  that  type of work  is as unbiased as is often claimed. “The Nobel prize has become quite a political animal,” he said, “in  the disguise of being scientifcally pure.”
  This was  the heart of  the  complaint  from  the Nobel winner Gunnar Myrdal. In a 1977 letter to a Swedish news-paper, he rejected the idea that the feld of economics could claim a Nobel on the basis of its scientifc rigor. Economics should concern  itself with political and  social needs, he argued, and he called for an end  to  the prize  in economics.
  The free-market conservative Friedrich von Hayek, who shared the Nobel in economics with Myrdal in 1974 despite being his ideological opposite, agreed on that point. Barbara Bergmann, an emeritus professor at American University and the University of Maryland, said  the same problem  that afflicts  the award afflicts  the profession as a whole: too much theorizing and not enough actual research.

诺贝尔经济学奖遭质疑
帕特里夏 •科恩

    与一个多世纪前诺贝尔遗嘱中提到的五大奖励领域不同，诺贝尔经济学奖由瑞典中央银行于 1968 年庆祝建行 300 周年之际创立，其全称为“瑞典中央银行纪念阿尔弗雷德 • 诺贝尔经济科学奖金” 。不过，诺贝尔经济学奖并没有像其他颁奖工作常见的那样因为血统问题而引起恐慌。

    德州大学奥斯汀分校林敦• B•约翰逊学院公共事务部经济学家詹姆士 •K• 迦尔布莱斯说： “他们并没有致力于解决真实世界中的问题。许多诺贝尔奖得主所从事的经济研究工作似乎与现实世界并没有什么联系。 ”这些话道出了大家普遍存在的不满。

    对诺贝尔经济学奖得主的抱怨主要集中在三个方面：过于意识形态化、过于理论化和数学化以及过于狭隘地关注华尔街所面临的问题，而不是处理诸如不平等、贫穷及环境之类的迫在眉睫的全球问题。

    但是加里 •S• 贝克尔却并不这么认为。他是芝加哥大学的一名经济学家，1992 年因将经济学理论扩展到对于人类行为（包括犯罪和种族歧视等行为）的分析上而获得诺贝尔经济学奖。他说， “人们对什么是重大价值贡献有着不同的评判” 。但他坚持认为诺贝尔经济学奖得主的工作确实反映了经济学领域最重要的研究，而且获得诺贝尔奖荣誉的研究工作也有利于帮助我们理解社会的运作方式。

    阿马蒂 • 森是少数因关注社会福利问题而获得诺贝尔经济学奖的经济学家之一。他也认为诺贝尔经济学奖得主完全配得上此项荣誉。本周诺贝尔经济学奖颁发给了 90岁的莱昂尼德•赫维奇和56岁的罗杰•迈尔森与埃里克•马斯金，他为此感到非常高兴。这三名美国经济学家创立并发展的理论，对个人、市场和机构之间的相互作用进行了详细阐述。

    自然科学奖肯定是诺贝尔奖的典范。但美国纽约大学新校区施瓦兹经济政策分析中心政策研究主任杰夫•马德里克称，认为经济学是一门科学的观点“非常夸张” 。

    马德里克不仅质疑经济学领域的重大贡献局限于那些以经济计量学为基础的研究，而且还怀疑此类研究工作是否像平常所宣称的那样公正。他说： “诺贝尔奖已经成为了一种伪装于科学纯洁光环下的政治动物。 ”

    这也是诺贝尔奖得主贡纳 • 米达尔抱怨的主要方面。在他 1977 年给瑞典一家报社的信中，他对经济学领域仅根据科学严密性就授予诺贝尔奖的思想进行了批评。他认为经济学应当关注政治和社会需求，同时他呼吁取消诺贝尔经济学奖。这一观点也得到了与其意识形态完全相反的弗里德里希 • 旺 • 哈耶克的赞同。他是一名自由市场保守主义者，曾于 1974 年与米达尔共同获得诺贝尔经济学奖。、

    美国大学及马里兰大学荣誉教授芭芭拉 • 勃格曼称困扰着诺贝尔经济学奖评选的这个问题也同时困扰着整个经济学界，即过于理论化，而实实在在的研究不多。

——选自《我爱读英文》