Nobel Prize Economics Odds

I

The first Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen in 1969. The Prize in Economic Sciences is awarded by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden, according to the same principles as for the Nobel Prizes that have been awarded since 1901. So until we can get Las Vegas to make book on the mass of the Higgs boson, Thomson Reuters is offering the next best thing: voting on the winners of this year's Nobel Prizes in science, which will be announced on Oct. 5 (medicine), Oct. 6 (physics), Oct. 7 (chemistry), and Oct. Nobel Prizes Betting Odds. View all available outright and match odds, plus get news, tips, free bets and money-back offers. All you need to bet.

Let's debunk a myth. There is no 'Nobel Prize in Economics'. On Nov 27, 1895, when Alfred Nobel signed his will, he left five prizes in alphabetical order to: chemistry, literature, peace, physics, and physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize in Economics is declared after the Panchapandavas above.

It's the most anticipated one. And yet it doesn't exist.

II

In 1968, the central bank of Sweden, Sveriges Riksbank, the oldest central bank in the world, decided to celebrate its 300th birthday. The bank pledged a donation to the Nobel Foundation to award a prize in memory of Alfred Nobel. It was officially christened 'Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel', and popularly as the 'Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences'. The first prize was awarded in 1969 to Ragnar Frisch of Norway and Jan Tinbergen of the Netherlands.

Sveriges Riksbank pledged to match the prize money of the original Nobels, and bear all administrative expenses. The prize would be administered by the Nobel Foundation. However, the bank kept one card up their sleeves. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (RSAS) would administer who is the winner. This is where our story starts.

III

RSAS determines who will receive a secret invitation to nominate a candidate. The list of the nominees won't be revealed for fifty years. RSAS can't be investigated for its choice.

Who is invited to nominate a candidate? Any Swedish or foreign member of RSAS; members of the prize committee of that year; past laureates; permanent professors of relevant subjects in Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland and Norway. And anybody else selected by the prize committee.

This is where the next twist comes in. Selection of a candidate is influenced by different personal factors. After more than half a century, the prize shows some selection bias. Let's see a few of them. Years in brackets refers to the year a person won the prize.

IV

Paul Samuelson (1970) was the first person from the USA to win the prize. His PhD supervisor Wassily Leontief (1973) also won the prize. So did Samuelson's PhD students Lawrence Klein (1980) and Robert Merton (1997).

Let's go back to Leontief. His PhD students—Paul Samuelson (1970), Robert Solow (1987), Vernon Smith (2002), and Thomas Schelling (2005)—all won the prize. Except for Vernon (so far), each of Leontief's students have PhD students who also won the prize. There are more examples like this.

The University of Chicago boasts the highest number of laureates. Till now, of the 86 laureates in economics, 31 have Chicago as their alma mater or were serving at Chicago at the time of the prize declaration. Nationality or citizenship-wise, 55 out of those 86 laureates have been from the USA.

The dominant ideology of the 'Nobel Prize in Economics' is the mainstream Neoclassical school. This school has championed the free market mainly through the Chicago school spearheaded by Milton Friedman (1976). If ever there was a selection bias, this is where it lies.

Very few economists outside the mainstream have won a prize. Joan Robinson, Paul Sweezy, John Galbraith, and Piero Sraffa rank among the best of the 20th century, but weren't mainstream, and can't win the prize now since they've left the material world.

V

The Nobel Prize in Economics should be taken with a pinch of salt. Each winner is an authority in their field. That's why they won. However, economics encompasses the seven shades of a rainbow. After half a century, the prize shows some shades, but not all. The true spirit of a Nobel Prize is its contribution to benefit mankind. Why should a 'Nobel Prize in Economics' be confined to less than seven shades of a full rainbow?

Asrar Chowdhury teaches economics in classrooms. Outside, he watches Test cricket, plays the flute and listens to music & radio podcasts. Email: asrarul@juniv.edu or asrarul@gmail.com

The Nobel Peace Prize committee is set to announce the winner of what is widely considered to be the world’s most prestigious prize on Oct 9. This year’s award may lack the centennial neatness of 2019’s 100th Nobel Peace Prize, but it has garnered intense speculation in a year shaped by a global pandemic and unprecedented social and economic upheaval.

Established by Alfred Nobel in 1895, the Nobel Peace Prize is one of six awards that also span literature, physics, chemistry, medicine or psychology, and economic sciences. Last year, the peace prize was awarded to Ethiopian President Abiy Ahmed, who engineered the end of a two-decade conflict with neighboring Eritrea.

Charged with selecting a winner from a confidential list of 318 candidates, the committee is rarely predictable in its choice—and experts give little credence to tipsters’ odds. Still, here is a selection of the bookmakers’ favorites to win the 2020 prize.

Nobel Prize Economics Betting Odds

The World Health Organization

COVID-19 has dominated headlines, conversations, and political debates in 2020. It has reshaped the way most of us travel, work, and interact with our communities. So, it’s unsurprising the World Health Organization is an odds-on favorite for the Nobel Peace Prize. The WHO has been front and center of global response: from declaring COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, to setting out public health guidance, to building capacity in countries most vulnerable to the disease. This year it has dispatched delegations to countries as diverse as Turkmenistan and Iran to support their COVID-19 response.

There have been some serious missteps along the way too. The WHO has been criticized for its late recommendation that the general public wears face coverings, its reliance on information from the Chinese government over whistleblowers like doctor Li Wenliang, and its sidelining of Taiwan. President Trump—facing criticism for his own catastrophic handling of the pandemic—has repeatedly blamed China and the WHO for COVID-19’s spread. In April, he announced the U.S. would cut its funding for the world body, a move the editor-in-chief of The Lancet medical journal called a “crime against humanity.”

Greta Thunberg

Economics Nobel Prize Winner

Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, TIME’s 2019 Person of the Year, has already won what is often referred to as the “alternative Nobel prize” for her climate change activism. She was most oddsmakers’ favorite for the Nobel-proper in 2019, after spearheading the global youth-led movement against climate change. In 2020, oddsmakers have again listed Thunberg among those deemed most likely to win.

Global lockdowns made the transcontinental zero-emissions journeys Thunberg undertook in 2019 less feasible this year, but the pandemic has not stunted her activism. In April, she launched a campaign to support UNICEF in protecting young lives during the pandemic. And Thunberg has consistently argued that climate change and COVID-19 should be fought simultaneously. The response to the pandemic shows the world can “act with necessary force” when faced with a global emergency, Thunberg told Sweden’s Sveriges Radio in July.

Nobel Prize Economics Pay People

Jacinda Ardern

While the U.S. presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic contender Joe Biden was marked by insults and interruptions, in New Zealand, the world’s youngest-ever female prime minister Jacinda Ardern exchanged robust policy debate and compliments with opposition leader Judith Collins.

The press called the two near-simultaneous debates a “contrast of styles.” But Arden has won as many plaudits for the substance of her leadership. Her strong but empathetic response to New Zealand’s Christchurch massacre made her a contender for the 2019 award, and Adern is again high on oddsmakers’ lists for 2020. The Prime Minister’s swift action on COVID-19 helped New Zealand maintain one of the world’s lowest death rates. But Ardern’s chances of winning may be hampered by New Zealand’s lack of involvement in major global treaties.

Nobel Prize Economics 2020 Odds

Donald Trump

U.S. President Donald Trump has said several times he believes he deserves to win the Nobel Peace Prize. At a January 2020 rally in Toledo, Ohio, he told his audience the 2019 prize awarded to Abiy Ahmed should have instead gone to him. In 2018, Trump said he deserved the award for his efforts to convince North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to give up nuclear weapons. However, a recent confidential U.N. report showed that North Korea is pressing ahead with its nuclear weapons program.

This year, the White House says Trump is being nominated for his leadership in brokering the Abraham Accords, which saw the UAE and Bahrain formally normalize relations with Israel. A signing ceremony in September allowed Trump to present his “Middle East Peace Plan” as a win—despite its failure to advance a solution to the decades-long Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The Abraham Accords formalize shifting power dynamics already underway in the Middle East, analysts say, but whether those dynamics lead to more or less stability remains an open question.

Loujain al-Hathloul

Saudi Arabian authorities detained Loujain al-Hathloul—along with several other women’s rights activists—in May 2018, only a month before the Kingdom lifted its longstanding ban on women driving. Even as other reforms that Hathloul had long campaigned for began to be implemented in the Kingdom, the 29-year-old’s enduring imprisonment is a stark reminder of the price of dissent under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “When the women were sent to jail in May 2018,” exiled Saudi Arabian activist Manal al-Sharif wrote last year for TIME, it was a “very clear sign from the government that these were not real reforms. Put simply: it’s a war on women.”

In an interview marking two years since al Hathloul’s incarceration, her Brussels-based sister Lina al Hathloul said that Loujain was offered freedom in exchange for publicly denying she had been tortured in prison. But, Lina al Hathloul told TIME: “She’d rather be in prison, following her values and fighting than be released and lose these two years for nothing.”

Other outside prospects

Among other prospects that oddsmakers list are the Black Lives Matter movement, for its role in focussing global attention on systematic racism and police brutality; press freedom watchdogs Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, and multilateral bodies such as the European Union and the UNHCR, the U.N.’s refugee organization. Other individual nominations include British naturalist and filmmaker David Attenborough, Sudanese activist Alaa Salah, and Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny.