IB Online: Eine kleine Netzschau

Ingrid links to some fascinating discussion from Philip Mirowski of the role of Swedish domestic politics in the establishment of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, with emphasis on the way in which claims of "scientific" status for economics helped the claim of the Swedish central bank to independence from government.

A few great data visualizations have come across my virtual desk in the past 48 hours. I've already shared a couple of them on my Tumblr feed, but since no one actually looks at that, I thought I would post them here, too.The first comes from Penn State Ph.D.

I'm not a big fan of the Nobel memorial prize in economics. For too long, it appeared to be used to reward the recognized elders of the subject, discourage attacks on orthodoxy, and foster the illusion that economics is a hard science like physics or chemistry.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences continues to astonish the public when awarding the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. In 2011 it celebrated the success of recent research in promoting macroeconomic stability. This year it pays tribute to the capacity of economists to predict the long-run movement of asset prices.