@85bears46 I recall similar stories. Even heard of some of the new guys getting zinged when they presented their work (which they did on occasion). The money workshop was, of course, THE boxing ring par excellence. If you survived with PhD in hand, you were probably in good shape for anything that was thrown your way as an academic. One guy I know graduated, got a decent ass’t prof job (good dept, good school) and proceeded to lay into the students in the same manner in which he was trained. There was blowback.
Unusual for the time but not so unusual now was the degree of collaboration between Econ and Business. Those used to be separate worlds at most other top schools! However, it was not unusual, at UChicago, for b-school PhD students to be sitting in on first year econ courses or for Econ PhD’s to be attending the finance workshop. Thesis committees would have faculty representation from both places. I found that to be very curious at the time since a subject like “Asset Pricing” was treated a tad differently between, say, Fama over in the B-School and Hansen over in Econ! In those days, it wasn’t just a matter of having “different” approaches - there were significant debates over whose approach was more relevant. As both won the Nobel at the same time, the answer, fortunately was decided (though I’m sure the internal debate hasn’t been settled, anymore than the rational vs. irrational debate will be).
“Back in 1993, a bunch of smart people decided the U. of C. couldn’t maintain its incredible track record of producing Nobel laureates in economics. … Who’d they think they were, anyway — Harvard?
Well, in the 24 years since those snarky comments, we count nine times a professor, or two, associated with the University of Chicago has been awarded…”
@JBStillFlying It’s not a science. And it suffers from palpable math envy. Hence the insatiable need to cloak intuitive insights into bombastic graphics, charts and formulas.
You believe that Elinor Ostrom, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic SCIENCES, and who earned her PhD in Political SCIENCE, is not doing science, correct? Do you disagree with the Merriam Webster definition: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science
Definition of science
1 :the state of knowing :knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding
2 a :a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study the science of theology
b :something (such as a sport or technique) that may be studied or learned like systematized knowledge have it down to a science
3 a :knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method
b :such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena :natural science
4 :a system or method reconciling practical ends with scientific laws cooking is both a science and an art
5 capitalized :christian science
What is your interpretation of the word “Scientia” in the UChicago motto “Crescat Scientia, Vita Excolatur”?
BTW, to answer your assertion that economics suffers from “math envy” - it’s actually the opposite. Check out the PhD’s of the some of the following Economics Nobel winners (no particular order):
A few others forayed into Economics after completing a degree in Math at the undergrad (or equivalent) level:
Hansen
Heckman
Sims
Harsanyi wanted to do Math but the War and concentration camps intervened so he had to settle for Philosophy and Sociology.
Actually, Debreu’s work in general equilibria was inspired by Leon Walras (d. 1910) who, as far as I know, might be the first heavy-duty math geek to foray into the field of economics. So you see, it’s the Mathematicians who have Econ. envy. And who can blame them?
Well-known Scottish philospher/historian/essayist/mathematician and all-round “educated guy” Thomas Carlyle constructed a moral argument for the continuation of slavery which had, at the time, just been outlawed in the West Indies. Plantation-owners were complaining about the resulting work-shortages so @Chrchill’s intuitive insight would of course prompt the sensible prescription to raise the wage and improve the working conditions in order to draw workers to your employment. But Carlyle was having none of that, work being a moral good and so forth (that “so forth” likely included some racist perceptions of black Africans). Shocking as this sounds today, that philosophical viewpoint most certainly must have influenced the Southern States in their refusal to abolish slavery in the US, as slavery was argued to be a “moral good” at the time that the Confederacy was established.
(Just as important, however, was the economics of slavery in the American South. Perhaps not so insightful intuitively is the work of economist and Nobel-winner Robert Fogel of UChicago, among others, who showed that, contrary to the prevailing viewpoint, slave-run farms and plantations were very successful economic enterprises and that slaves themselves oftentimes were better-fed and had better working conditions than workers in the industrial North.)
Carlyle clearly disliked “Political Economy” for its more laissez-faire recommendations - perhaps he thought that free agency for all violated the Moral Order. So he drew a contrast to what was well-known at the time as the “Gay Science” (that’s song and verse-writing, in case you were wondering) and asserted the following:
"the Social Science … which finds the secret of this Universe in supply and demand and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone … is a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call … the dismal science.”
What I find fascinating is that Carlyle argues against economic thought because it permits agency for everyone, while writers such as Dickens argues against economic thought because of its Malthusian conclusions and utter neglect for the poor! Modern economic thought - influential as it has been over the past 240 years - has no friends. Dismal, indeed!
social sciences are not sciences. The are academic disciplines. Only natural sciences and their progeny are sciences. The latest interloper into science is “jurisprudential science.” Rule of thumb: whenever a field adds science to its name, it actually is not a science.
Yep – last time I checked we had life sciences, physical sciences, and social sciences. Designations which prove very helpful in understanding what course of study appeals to you.
While the debate as to whether economics is truly a “science“ has been going on for a long time and will probably continue longer still for those actually interested in the subject, we do know that fields of social science - including economics - had enthusiastically embraced the work of renowned science philosopher Thomas Kuhn when debating the relevance of competing methodologies. In fact, they understood the application very quickly, perhaps because the the social sciences were, at the time, undergoing significant methodological transformation due to the increasing popularity and influence of positivist thought. It was very quickly recognized that social sciences can follow the patterns that other sciences undergo in terms of evolutionary movement, at least as Kuhn described it. Kuhn’s understanding of “science” was definitely more broad than his predecessors but that may well be appropriate given the evolutionary trends in so many fields of scientific study.
For those who ARE interested, here is a pithy article by Shiller (Nobel Laureate in economics):
It’s easy to explain: The algorithms for each ranking are significantly different (obviously), with fewer than half of their elements in common. The world rankings look at the university as a whole, the national rankings are specifically college rankings.
The more interesting statistic is nobel producers since 2000. Harvard and Yale are not even in the top ten. Germany’s Max Plank and Israel’s Technion are. UChicago, Columbia, and Stanford all in top range.
