Bitter Roots: Finance and Social Democracy between the Wars

2019 ◽  
pp. 68-88
Author(s):  
Avner Offer ◽  
Gabriel Söderberg
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Business Cycles ◽  
Central Bank ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Nobel Prizes ◽  
And Control

This chapter explains the history and context behind the origins of the Nobel Prize in economics. When founded in 1968, the Nobel Prize in economics was a delayed artefact of the quest to understand and control financial and business cycles in the twentieth century. Like the original Nobel Prizes, it was endowed from the bounty of a single benefactor, in this case the governor of the Riksbank, Sweden's central bank. While Alfred Nobel's motivation was sublime, and the money came out of his will, the chain of causes for the economics prize was something of a farce, and was paid for by Swedish taxpayers. How it came about cannot be separated from what it is about, and the context is more telling than the prize itself. It was a belated incident in one of the central plots of modern history — the distributional struggle between the owners of wealth and the rest of society. In an ironic twist, this late-coming Nobel was authorized by Swedish Social Democracy in the course of its long stand-off with Swedish capitalism, in the belief that it did not matter. But it did.

Models into Policy: Assar Lindbeck and Swedish Social Democracy

2019 ◽  
pp. 174-197
Author(s):  
Avner Offer ◽  
Gabriel Söderberg
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Central Bank ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Sharp Focus ◽  
Public Money ◽  
Market Liberalism

This chapter looks at how Swedish Social Democracy was eventually challenged by the doctrines honoured by the prize it had created. Economists first took their place among the Nobel Prize winners in 1969, at the height of the golden age of Social Democracy in Sweden. The prize was paid by the central bank out of public money. However, a chronic economic crisis in the 1970s drove voters away from Social Democracy and towards a market liberalism which finally prevailed (for a while) in the 1990s. The focus here is on the role of economic theory. For this purpose, the travails of Social Democracy are followed as they affected the public trajectory of Assar Lindbeck (b. 1930), ‘the key figure in Swedish economics’. The discipline of economics in Sweden mostly spoke with one voice in this period, so this method provides for a sharp focus and fewer words.

India's Physics and Chemistry Nobel Prize nominators and nominees in colonial and international context

2007 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajinder Singh
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Third World ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
International Context ◽  
Nobel Prizes

In India the development of modern science is closely related to its colonial background, a subject well documented by historians. So far as the prestigious Nobel Prizes are concerned, little has been mentioned in the colonial context. This article shows that in the first half of the twentieth century only a few Indian physicists and chemists were either nominees or nominators. Some of them were Fellows of the Royal Society. A comparison of Indian Nobel Prize nominators and nominees with other so-called Third World countries and colonies suggests some interesting results, for example the similarities of development of physics and chemistry in the colonized and ruling countries. The present article also suggests that the election of the Fellows of the Royal Society from India, in the fields of physics and chemistry, reveals a pattern comparable with that of Nobel Prize nominations and nominees.

The Nobel Factor

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avner Offer ◽  
Gabriel Söderberg
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Central Bank ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Real World ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
The Real ◽  
Deregulated Markets ◽  
Developed World ◽  
Market Liberalism

Our confidence in markets comes from economics, and our confidence in economics is underpinned by the Nobel Prize in Economics, which was first awarded in 1969. Was it a coincidence that the prize and the rise of free-market liberalism began at the same time? This is the first book to describe the origins and power of the most important prize in economics. It tells how the prize, created by the Swedish central bank, emerged from a conflict between central bank orthodoxy and Sweden's social democracy. The aim was to use the halo of the Nobel brand to influence the future of Sweden and the rest of the developed world by enhancing the bank's authority and the prestige of market-friendly economics. And the strategy has worked spectacularly — with sometimes disastrous results for societies striving to cope with the requirements of economic theory and deregulated markets. Drawing on previously untapped archives and providing a unique analysis of the sway of prizewinners, the book offers an unprecedented account of the real-world consequences of economics and its greatest prize.

Places of ‘invention and discovery’ and the Nobel Prize in Physics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Orrman-Rossiter
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Royal Swedish Academy ◽  
Nobel Prizes ◽  
Nobel Laureates ◽  
Nobel Prize In Physics ◽  
Research Excellence ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

The Nobel Prize has acted as a surrogate record of invention and discovery throughout the twentieth century. Based on this surrogacy, many claims are made regarding both trends in research and claims for places of research excellence. In this paper I propose that any analysis should be weighted by the ‘prize share’ made by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to each recipient. In addition, I argue for a focus on the organization and period when the prize-winning research was carried out, rather than when the award was made and the often quoted ‘affiliated organization at the time of award’. I use this to briefly examine types of invention and discovery for all Nobel Prizes in Physics awarded to date (1901–2019). I then use this ‘place’ lens to briefly explore trends in invention and discovery in the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Physics. I conclude by drawing attention to the difference between institutions claiming Nobel Laureates and institutions where Nobel Prize-winning discoveries and inventions have been made.

GOVERNMENT/BUSINESS SYNERGY: EARLY AMERICAN INNOVATIONS IN BUDGETING AND COST ACCOUNTING

1992 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Penny Marquette ◽  
Richard K. Fleischman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Cost Accounting ◽  
American Government ◽  
Significant Cost ◽  
Industrial Environment ◽  
Early American ◽  
Planning And Control ◽  
And Control ◽  
Governmental Budgeting

This paper examines certain interactions between American government and business which resulted in important innovations in the areas of budgeting and cost accounting early in the twentieth century. The evidence suggests that budgeting methods were initially developed by municipal reformers of the Progressive era and were subsequently adapted by business for planning and control purposes. In like fashion, standard costing and variance analysis were significant cost accounting techniques born to an industrial environment which came to contribute markedly to a continuing improvement of governmental budgeting procedures.

Australia

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Ville
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Business Model ◽  
Capital Markets ◽  
Business Groups ◽  
Business Group ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Resource Base ◽  
Australian Economy ◽  
Diversified Portfolio

Business groups have been limited in number and influence for most of Australia’s modern history. Several entrepreneurs managed a diversified portfolio of interests, and business families often cooperated with one another, but this rarely took the form of a business group. When the Australian economy diversified into manufacturing from its initial narrow resource base, multinational corporations formed a dominant presence. Governments built infrastructure but did not facilitate groups. Maturing capital markets negated the need for in-house treasuries. Business groups temporarily dominated the corporate landscape for several decades towards the end of the twentieth century, but their business model was flawed in relation to the Australian environment and most failed to survive the downturn of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

‘A magic science’: rock music as a recording art

Popular Music ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 195-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Sound Recording ◽  
Musical Practice ◽  
Order And Disorder ◽  
Twentieth Century Music ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
And Control ◽  
Jimi Hendrix ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Jimi Hendrix once claimed ‘I'm working on music to be completely, utterly a magic science’ (Henderson 1981, p. 337). It is a description that fits not just the best of Hendrix's own music, but the best of all that late twentieth-century music in which the ability to capture and control sounds (on tape or disc) has become a means of extending old musical forms and traditions, and establishing new possibilities for them. Throughout his career, Hendrix drew nourishment from his musical roots in black traditions, but it was not until the summer of 1967 that he plugged himself fully into the new possibilities opened up by the technology of sound recording. Hendrix had already proved himself something of a musical ‘magician’ in the ancient sense in that he attempted, through music, to mediate between order and disorder, using his guitar as an expressive extension of himself to flirt with the danger and power of musical disintegration (for the parallel with non-Western musical practice see Shepherd 1977, p. 72; Mellers 1973, pp. 24–6; Clarke 1982, pp. 227–9).

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