22. THE NINTH CLASS

A republic with deep divisions

A familiar failing in human undertakings is to ignore the uncertainty of the future. We slap a ruler on a trend-line of some development that benefited us in the past and assume it will benefit us in the future.

That’s the mistake I made last week when I wrote about “The Future of Economics.” My assumption was that economics, at least the Nobel version of it would continue to develop as it had in the past. It will not.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences still elects the laureates in physics, chemistry, and economics. The real power rests with, the classes. There are ten of these organized around disciplines. Class One is :“the Mathematician,” Class Two “the Physicists,”“ Class Three, “the Chemists,” and so on. Class Nine used to be “the Economists.” Now “Economics, Statistics, ad Social Sciences” has become “the Social Scientists.”

Class members vote, apparently annually, to elect five members of a selection committee, one of them chairman . They will serve for three years, with its adjunct members, half a dozen or more, the committee begins a discussion of possibilities. s. For two years, apparently, they argue, then try to achieve consensuses.

Ultimately, the five elected members of the selection committee settle on a recommendation and pass their reasoning to the other members of their class. They look it over and give their opinions, before forwarding it to the Academy, which almost always accepts it. Thus, members of any particular class control the process from beginning to end.

The Academy imposed two other measures on Class Nine in the wake of the John Nash affair.