Talk:Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences

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[edit] Milton Friedman & Nobel Memorial Prize

[copied from User talk:Panda#Milton Friedman & Nobel Memorial Prize]

Please see WP:V: The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material. I already checked your source and it doesn't support text you added. As for external links, there is no "official site". Can you provide the line from website where it says that it is official website of the prize? -- Vision Thing -- 18:41, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Please recheck the source as it supports that there were protests about Friedman's Nobel prize. I'm not going to claim that the entire text is correct, but the reference does apply to part of the text. So either the text should be corrected or additional info should be added, but it should not be completely removed because you find part of it incorrect.
Additional support that there were protests about Friedman's Nobel prize and his involvement with the Chilean government:
  • "The Editorial Board of the Review has decided to reprint the following article* with a two fold purpose. ... Secondly we want to protest the awarding of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Economics to Milton Friedman, the reactionary Chicago School economist Letelier's documentation, in the following article, of the Chilean situation and of Friedman's involvement in the junta's political economic policies will stand as the strongest possible condemnation of that award. The decision of the Swedish Royal Academy must be condemned as an act of aggression not only against social change but also against any standards of economic objectivity." Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol. 8, No. 3, 44-52 (1976)
  • "The award of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science to Prof. Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago last October provoked a storm of criticism over Professor Friedman's right-wing politics, focused particularly on his willingness to give advice to the post-Allende Government of Chile." Nobel Award in Economics: Should Prize Be Abolished?, Leonard Silk, NY Times, March 31, 1977.
  • "Milton Friedman, who is the intellectual architect and unofficial adviser for the team of economists now running the Chilean economy" from Orlando Letelier, The Nation, 28 August 1976
  • "In a deplorable exhibition of insensitivity, the Nobel memorial Committee on Economics has awarded its prize this year to Milton Friedman. ... Friedman had earlier stated, 'In spite of my profound disagreement with the authoritarian political system of Chile, I do not consider it as evil for an economist to render technical economic advice to the Chilean Government, any more than I would regard it as evil for a physical to give technical medical advice to the Chilean Government to help end a medical plague." George Wald & Linus Pauling, Letters to the Editor, NY Times, Oct 24, 1976.
  • "...it is very disturbing that a Nobel prize for economics should be awarded to Prof. Milton Friedman. ... According to reports in The Times and elsewhere, Professor Friedman has been a major economic adviser and supporter of the Chilean junta, an oppressive anti-democratic government that our Congress has recently excluded from economic credits. That the Swedish committee should have chosen to honor Professor Friedman at this time is an insult ot the people of Chile, burdened by the reactionary economic measures sponsored by Professor Friedman, and especially to those Chileans who are in jail or in exile as a result of the policies of the military government." David Baltimore & S. E. Luria, Letters to the Editor, NY Times, Oct 24, 1976.
  • "Milton Friedman had no idea that his six-day trip to Chile in March 1975 would generate so much controversy. He was invited to Santiago by a group of Chilean economists who over the previous decades had been educated at the University of Chicago, in a program set up by Friedman's colleague, Arnold Harberger. ... Friedman and Harberger were flown down to "help to sell" the plan to the military junta, which despite its zealous defense of the abstraction of free enterprise was partial to corporatism and the maintenance of a large state sector. Friedman gave a series of lectures and met with Pinochet for 45 minutes, where the general "indicated very little indeed about his own or the government's feeling." Milton Friedman and the Economics of Empire: The Road from Serfdom, Greg Grandin, November 17, 2006.
From what I've read there was a misunderstanding that fostered the protests and that could certainly be elaborated on in the article. –panda (talk) 19:15, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
For more evidence of Friedman's involvement with the Chilean government, see also:
–panda (talk) 19:23, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
As I noted in my edit summary, part that is wrong is: Friedman's theories and career, his advocacy of free market economic policies in general and his work with the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in particular, had been controversial. Friedman did not "work with" Pinochet, and his proposed economic policies are generally seen as a part of mainstream. If you wish you can add something about protests since there is no dispute about that. -- Vision Thing -- 19:37, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps you would prefer that "Pinochet consulted with Friedman about his economics policies" or something to that effect since that seems to be what all of the protests were about...? –panda (talk) 19:51, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Even if a majority of "mainstream" economists currently follow Friedman's views, they were extremely controversial in the 1970s and into the 1980s, and continue to be so in the political mainstream, particularly in term of the impact of their implementation and also their interpretation by others, as well as being disputed by noted economists such as Paul Krugman, Jeffrey Sachs and Joseph Stiglitz. As for Friedman's strong association with and praise for Pinochet (free markets free minds indeed!}, that is fairly categorical, as are the protests at his receiving the Nobel Memorial Prize. The inclusion of this is the article is well-sourced and cannot be disputed much further.Nwe (talk) 21:01, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Forgot to comment on the "official site" issue. Even the Nobel Foundation doesn't claim that http://nobelprize.org/ is the official website of the Nobel Prizes, but of the Nobel Foundation. So it isn't relevant if a website claims it is the official site of the prize or not. OTOH, the description you changed it to "Official website of the Sveriges Riksbank’s" is grammatically and factually incorrect since the link is not to Sveriges Riksbank, but to the "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel" on the Sveriges Riksbank website. I'm not against changing it to an alternative, factually correct descriptions but the one you changed it to is simply wrong. –panda (talk) 19:47, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
I mostly concur with the edits made here by Vision Thing. --Doopdoop (talk) 20:53, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Um, that's not really good enough, you have to give reasons.Nwe (talk) 21:04, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Reasons are already given by Vision Thing. --Doopdoop (talk) 23:02, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

So why say anything at all? And Vision Thing's reasons aren't very good.Nwe (talk) 23:48, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I've updated the text about Milton Friedman to discuss the protests that had to do with the Chilean government issue. Someone else may want to add how the protests were related to other issues -- something I haven't bothered to check on. –panda (talk) 00:00, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Nationality

I'm thinking of getting rid of the multiple-nationality flags in the Laureates table. For me, it's confusing. At the Nobel site they give nationality (I'm presuming that means citizenship) and "born" when that's different (for example Vickrey). I think that level of detail's unnecessary here, or if it is considered valuable, the same distinction should be made here as at the Nobel site. Whatcha think? Cretog8 (talk) 10:03, 6 June 2008 (UTC)