Nobel choices leaner and lean to U.S.
I would love to be a mouse under the conference table during meetings of the committee that selects the Nobel laureate in economics. So would a lot of other economists.
Our curiosity is piqued not by any desire to penetrate some mysterious cabal, but rather to know how the committee picks one or two scholars out of a crowd of many good researchers. This all says something about the state of our discipline.
Economists are doing a lot of good work. It is not clear that anyone is doing great work. That is not the only lesson one can draw from this year’s crop of Nobel laureates in various disciplines.
The geographically diverse origin of the laureates in physics, chemistry and medicine point out two salient characteristics of modern science: A disproportionate fraction takes place in the United States and this nation continues to suck in some of the best brains born — and frequently educated — in other countries.
This implies important lessons for economic growth, though perhaps not as strongly as it might have 30 years ago.
Let’s start with the first of these lessons — the discipline of economics. This year’s laureates, Robert Engle and Clive Granger, are intelligent, productive scholars. They developed new techniques in time series analysis — using computerized mathematical models to analyze economic data over a series of different periods.
Granger in particular has been prominent for many years. Few, if any, economists would say that these two do not deserve international recognition for their work.
While many economists have a personal favorite for the award — a former teacher, a colleague or someone whose work matches their own values — an objective poll of the discipline probably would not have identified anyone more deserving or more likely to win a Nobel.
But such a poll probably would identify at least 20 other economists as worthy or as likely to win as Engle and Granger. Their work is excellent — as is that done by the seven economists named in the previous three years — but so is the work of many others in the field.
Not since Robert Lucas won eight years ago has there been a laureate whom a clear majority of economists would have put on their short lists. It was not always thus.
Those honored in the early years after the award was instituted in 1969 were giant oaks in the forest of economics: Paul Samuelson, Milton Friedman, Ragnar Frisch and John Hicks were shoo-ins from Day One.
The Nobel committee, however, was working through the backlog of great economists that existed three decades ago. Now they have to choose among the very good, rather than among the brilliant.
The fact that one economist named Wednesday was born and educated in the United Kingdom while the other was from the United States — combined with the fact that both teach at U.S. universities — points out another lesson in the Nobel selections. Bright scholars are born in many countries, including poor countries such as Egypt and India as well as in Europe and North America.
But the United States continues to garner a disproportionate share of Nobel awards in physics, chemistry and medicine as well as in economics. Moreover, a high proportion of winners who work at U.S. institutions were, like Clive Granger, born in other countries but made their professional careers in this nation.
This is reassuring evidence that U.S. universities and research institutions continue to produce superlative work. Moreover, bright people around the world continue to leave their native lands to work in our country.
Many Germans and Russians have also won science Nobel prizes, but it is hard to find a laureate affiliated with a German or Russian institution who was born elsewhere.
Leadership in science fosters technological innovation and economic growth. This year’s laureates in medicine are a U.S. chemist and an English physicist who developed Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Leadership in medical diagnostic research contributes to the strong medical device industry — including here in the Twin Cities — which is such an important component of U.S. industry.
One reason the United States occupies such a strong position in scientific research is that we have a better system of funneling government money to scientists than do Japan or the European countries. Scientific research is a public good that increases the material well being of U.S. citizens, but it is not high on most people’s list of priorities for federal spending. That is a shame.
One final note is that cultural factors also contribute to leadership in scientific research.
Germany and Japan in particular are two nations with very strong scientific bases. There are many bright, hard-working German and Japanese researchers in many fields. But Germany and Japan have reputations, perhaps well deserved, of having cultures into which it is hard for immigrants to fit.
The United States, in contrast, long has had a reputation as a nation that welcomes immigrants and tolerates cultural diversity. This allows us to get brilliant people from abroad more cheaply than more closed societies in Asia or Europe. This is true in pure research, but also in the applied fields of computer science and telecommunications. Chinese- and Indian-born engineers, in particular, make huge contributions to U.S. leadership in these fields.
© 2003 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.