Leak from 1988 archives of boardroom The Economist

[chris macrae]

I could tell you 10 stories of accidental reporting of Economics 1949-1988 but here's one for now :

 

I dont think I have told it before even to the person who apears at the end.

 

During the 1970s the Swedes who gave the Nobel Prizes in economics kept getting into trouble. One year they would give it to Milton Frioedman, and be attacked for being too far to the right. so the next year they gave it to Larry Klein who was a communist; then to Fritz von Hayek, so they were attacked as being right wing again; then which everybody's forgotten they gave it to Kantovich a marxist economist actually in the Soviet Union in the days when Marxist economics in the soviet union was not being a howling success. And so in the next eyar, which was wither 1977 or 1978 they decided to give it to somebody connecetd with buisness schools, because they thought that would be a nice non-disturbance-causing part of the science

 

And they asked the 50 iniversities on that year's list to nominate somebody in this general line, which was fine except for the one univesrity which was in Japan. The Japanese didnt have business schools -icidentally why they are so successful at buisness - but this university had to nominate some foreigner who had written something about management or entrepreneurialism, and been printed in japanese, and prefeably been nice about Japan. So you can see where this is leading, into my room comes Ricard casement who always knew everything before it happened and says that a Japanese university of which I have never jheard of has nominated me for the Nobel. Now alas of the 4 million people then in the world there were only 2 who thought this was a sensible idea. One was me and the other was the vice chnacleeor of the quite unjponouncable Japanese University

 

Still I spent the next 3 months eagerly accepting invitations to lecture in Sweden and n the day due for announcement hung around the tape machine looking nonchalant with a transistor in my ear. And the first part of Ricard's report had clearly been right because they did give it to some non-economist, but van American called Apfelstrudel or something who had invented busienss schools or some such. So I though ah well, perhaps next year if I am very tactful. And then taht Wednesday The Economist note about the Nobel announcement came over my desk. Someone had written: the Nobel committee has always been pretty dumb but this year it doesnt realise the difference between economics and so-called management science is : point A kick in the groin; point B kick in the gron; point C kick in the groin and left uppercut. So I though oops they will think I wrote that with the surest vof grapes. So I rang up sarah, and said sarah about the Nobel Prize - and she said Yes, you must promise not to chnage a word of that. Its by the new economics correpondent. And he's by far the brighest chap we have ever had so even if you disagree with it you must promise not to chnage a word. You understand. So I said, as one always did, Yes sarah.

 

... Norman never heard from Nobel again though Sweden did ask him to customise his 1984 book on the net generation - which in 1993 became The New Vikings - the future Histiory vof Sweden 1995-2015 - evidently a microeconomics success story