Voting is now open for what has been renamed the Dynamite Prize in Economics.
The renaming was necessary because the owners of the Ig Nobel Prize objected to the similarity–which is understandable. They also suggested the Dynamite Prize as a useful alternative.
We are, after all, intending to award the prize to the three economists who did most to drop the GFC bomb on the global economy, via their naive and utterly unrealistic theories of economics.
The selection process produced the following set of nominees:
- Fischer Black and Myron Scholes
- Eugene Fama
- Milton Friedman
- Alan Greenspan
- Assar Lindbeck
- Robert Lucas
- Richard Portes
- Edward Prescott and Finn E. Kydland
- Paul Samuelson
- Larry Summers
I would have preferred to see Bernanke there as well–he was one of my own nominees–but he didn’t survive the editorial process.
After all, there was stiff competition…
Voting is via the Real World Economics Review Blog, and it’s extremely simple: just go to the blog, tick the three nominees you regard most worthy of receiving the Prize, and click on the Vote button (the list is on the right hand column of the blog). Your computer’s IP address is recorded (so that you can’t vote twice) and the votes are then automatically tallied.
Over a thousand people had voted as of two days ago. Please add to the numbers–the more the merrier on this unpopularity poll. Help send a message to the many neoclassical economists who still don’t get it that their theories helped cause this crisis.
For the record, my own votes were for Greenspan, Friedman, and Samuelson.
Once you’ve done that, turn your mind to another topic: what to call what was to be the Nobel Prize in Economics for the three economists who did the most to anticipate and warn about the GFC. Since we’re including dead economists in the list for getting the Stick of Dynamite, I will definitely be nominating Hyman Minsky as the outstanding candidate for the … What shall we call it? Ideas please!
