Newspapers have an extremely expensive product. They have to pay for it somehow! You can’t give away an expensive product for free forever!
No one on the internet likes paying for access to content. After 35 years we have not found a way to monetize except ad tech.
Is that so hard to understand?
Every time someone links an article on this website from an expensive print publication, there is immediately a link in the comments to a paywall-evading site!
The dialog around ads on HN is extremely low quality, highly focused on costs and with no attention at all paid to benefits.
I’d love an estimate from you (or anyone) about the marginal effect on the profession’s “legitimacy” (which is what? and how’s it measured?) from having the prize include Nobel’s name vs. not including it.
Mokyr’s northwestern website has links to a lot of his papers.
An extremely crude selection rule:
Anything published in the American economic review, quarterly journal of economics, journal of political economy has the profession’s “highest stamp of approval”. It’s really hard to publish anything there. (There are two journals im not listing in that “top” category but he has no papers there on his website.). On aghion or howitts websites, look for the above journals but also econometrica and the review of economic studies. Those are the “top five” in the field.
There are surely papers in good history and Econ history journals on mokyr’s website but I don’t know the journals!
Standards for any chapter in a “handbook of X economics” or “handbook of the economics of X” are high - those should be good surveys.
Similarly a paper in the “annual review of economics”
Also mokyr has a bunch of work on Amazon. “The lever of riches” is a classic. “A culture of growth” is well regarded.
Finally he has a forthcoming book called “two paths to prosperity” with two other distinguished guys - one Econ historian (greif) and one political economy guy (tabellini). It’s coming out in about three weeks. Good timing, Princeton U Press!
Aghion and howitt have a growth textbook at the advanced undergrad level called “the economics of growth.”
They have a much more advanced work called “endogenous growth theory” which is for specialists (or at least anyone with first year PhD macro)
Aghion has a book called “the power of creative destruction.”
An unexpected (to me!) prize but definitely a good one.
What’s notable is that mokyr’s research is very, very accessible to a layman. You can read his books and understand them nearly perfectly without needing substantial technical background. (Of course there’s a huge existing literature in economics and history he’s engaging with which you won’t know, but I’m not an economic historian either so a lot of it is unfamiliar to me too.). Try it! Hopefully you learn something.
Also the committee always releases a good non-technical summary of the laureates work and an even better “more technical” summary. You can start there for an overview.
As for the point which will be raised endlessly here that this is “not a real Nobel” - whatever. No one in the economics profession cares. Alfred Nobel doesn’t have a monopoly on prizes or priority to decide which fields are worth recognizing. It’s our highest prestige prize. Call it what you want.
If you read the review, you will see the author notes that issue pretty often and specifically discusses ways in which the oldest book he reviews (from 2014) both is and isn’t useful.
Why stand up and not use your legs at all?? People have rowed it.
This is a weird stunt that won’t prove anything. If he (magically) made it in a week people would still fly.
What’s the point? Don’t say “raising awareness”. Whose mind does the exercise have a chance of changing about what question? What behavioral change will that changed mind cause?
The large tech firms get a surprisingly large amount of hate on antitrust issues on this website for startups so I appreciate your point bc I think it’s often missed.
No one on the internet likes paying for access to content. After 35 years we have not found a way to monetize except ad tech.
Is that so hard to understand?
Every time someone links an article on this website from an expensive print publication, there is immediately a link in the comments to a paywall-evading site!
The dialog around ads on HN is extremely low quality, highly focused on costs and with no attention at all paid to benefits.