The latest episode of the LSE IQ podcast asks: What’s it like to win a Nobel Prize?
Nobel Prizes and the “Nobel Prize in Economics”, more accurately known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, are awarded every year in October.
This month, the LSE IQ podcast speaks to two Nobel laureates, Professor Esther Duflo and Sir Christopher Pissarides, as well as Elizabeth Lewis Channon and Khari Motayne the daughter and nephew in law respectively of Sir Arthur Lewis, the first black man to win the Nobel Prize in Economics.
The two Nobel winners discuss the very personal impacts of winning the prize and how the call doesn’t always come at the most opportune moment. They also explain how the prize can shape and cement academic schools of thought. As the youngest winner of the prize, Esther Duflo considers how the prize can be important in validating and developing the collective work of researchers working towards similar goals, in her case the use of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in development economics.
In contrast, Christopher Pissarides weighs the pros and cons of the signalling effect of winning a Nobel and the potential it gives individual researchers to influence society and policy. This is an issue famously raised by another LSE prize-winner, Friedrich Hayek, who claimed in his acceptance speech the award would give undue authority to economists over “laymen: politicians, journalists, civil servants and the public generally”.
Finally, Elizabeth Lewis Channon and Khari Motayne reflect on how the Nobel Prize formed the pinnacle of Arthur Lewis’ groundbreaking career. His work continues to be foundational to the teaching of development economics at LSE – a legacy they hope will inspire a new wave of visionary economists interested in the challenges of the developing world.
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