This year’s economics laureates have sparked mixed reactions. While they’ve popularized key concepts, critics argue their simplified perspectives may overlook crucial complexities in economic development.
It has been on the news that three economists – Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson – received a famous prize for their work. According to my somewhat superficial impression the euvre of the laureates is quite broad and heterogenous providing more (e.g. here) or less (e.g. here) nuanced takes on the driving forces of economic development. Similarly, these authors contributed to the increased visibility of important concepts and topics like path dependence, colonization or technological unemployment within the economic mainstream. However, at the same time, they often employed these notions in very simplifed, potentially misleading ways (as probably here). Quite ironically, this charge of over-simplifcation could also be levied with respect to the official ‚illustrations’ attached to the official press release (see here, here or here).
Heterodox Economics Newsletter
Der Heterodox Economics Newsletter wird herausgegeben von Jakob Kapeller und erscheint im dreiwöchentlichen Rhythmus mit Neuigkeiten aus der wissenschaftlichen Community multiparadigmatischer ökonomischer Ansätze. Der Newsletter richtet sich an einen Kreis von mehr als 7.000 Empfänger*innen und zählt schon weit mehr als 250 Ausgaben.
Against this ambivalent backdrop it is not all too surprising that stances taken by critical commentators similarly covered a broad spectrum. I sum, I have came across three types of contributions: For one, I read comments that critize the work of the laureates for being lopsided in terms of theory and policy (e.g. here) or for making empirically implausible and badly substantiated arguments (see, e.g., here or here). For another, some voices indicated that there exists a noteworthy aspect in the works of this year’s laureates that has already been preconceived by some heterodox author several decades ago (see, e.g., here and here). Finally, some people focused on how most official statements spotlighted aspects of the laureates’ work that are well compatible with mainstream economics and neoliberal policies, although these works also contain more critical, less mainstream notions (e.g. here).
At first sight these responses might seem contradictory, but eventually most of these comments are valid in the sense that some aspects of the laureates’ work are indeed highly controversial and often rightly so. A key example is probably given by the widely held notion that ‚good institutions’, often understood as a minimal state, is the main source of economic growth. However, at the same time, their work is in many instances creative and sometimes aiming to push the mainstream to new boundaries. Hence, I think it is a good idea of the editors of the Journal of Institutional Economics to take this multi-facetness as an opportunity to set up a call inviting contributions discussing the works of ‚institutional economists’, who were honored as ‚Nobel’-prize laureates in past. While it might be a highly controversial choice for some to include this year’s laureates in the cluster of ‚institutional economics’, such controversy is in my experience often a good starting point and motivation to dig deeper into a certain topic and, hopefully, learn something new ;-)
All the best,
