Scholarly Comments on Academic Economics

HERE

Who Should Get the Nobel Prize in Economics, and Why? A Call for Proposals

Econ Journal Watch plans a symposium on who should get the Nobel prize in economics, and why. The aim is not to canvass for opinion about who should get the prize, but to generate essay-form appreciations of the work of individual economists.

Send your proposal to write an essay explaining why Person A should receive a Nobel prize in economics to Jason Briggeman (EJW Managing Editor), at jason@briggeman.org. We also welcome mere queries in such direction.

Some guidelines:

  • Proposers should be qualified to explain the merit of the work of Person A.
  • As we know, the prize sometimes goes to a person in the social sciences but not strictly economics, and in this project we certainly share that spirit.
  • The essay about Person A could be written by multiple authors.
  • We think it fine if the authors cooperate with Person A in producing and drafting the essay; any such cooperation may go acknowledged or unacknowledged, as the parties involved see fit.
  • The essay should aim to touch on all of Person A’s work, though it is fine of course to focus on the contributions that are especially thought to make Person A worthy of the prize.
  • The essay should be candid about significant shortcomings of A’s most important contributions, and significant criticisms.
  • We welcome proposals about Person A regardless of his or her ideological orientation. Proposers may expect ideological outlook to play no role in approving proposals.
  • We shall need to be selective about the Person A. Although not every Person A needs to be regarded by us as an actually conceivable prospective prize-winner, we do need to regard the Person A as sufficiently eminent, accomplished, or interesting to warrant such attention.
  • The case for Person A may involve justification “outside the box” of what we may think of as normal criteria for a Nobel prize in economics. Such unconventional justification for Person A is not unwelcome, but it may itself call for some justification within the essay.

We aim to publish the symposium in one of the issues of the year 2020.