Over a period of time Economics Nobel Laurates studied and researched in many areas including Macro Economics, Consumption, Economic Policy Making, Micro Financing, Global Equity Markets, Market Capitalization, Wealth Building, Poverty, Developmental Economics, Welfare Economics, Political Economics, Human Development, and Demand and Supply Studies. Among these studies, this specific Speech Insight brings out the essence of few works of Nobel Laurates who got Nobel Prizes in Economics post 2015. This speech insight describes the essence of Social Development; Macro Economics and Consumer Behaviour; and Global Poverty and Experimental Interventions.
Social Development: Nobel Laurates such as Amartya Sen worked widely on Social Choice Theory, Social Decisions, Effect of Politics on Social Decisions, The Logic Behind Social Decisions, and the Public Reasoning leading to Social Choices and Decisions. Over a period of time, several developments such as Economics formal and conceptual theories, Social Choice Theory, Social Welfare theory, Social Decisions and Institutions are evolved. In Social Choice Theory: most societies think of public decisions. Mathematical aggregations are involved in counting social choices and voting choices. Social Choice Theory mainly focuses on public reasoning and public discussions. Usually in general societies, public reasoning is quite common particularly related to welfare aspects. Adam Smith is one of those who proposed public reasoning; it is evident from his seminal book of The Wealth of the Nations. Content of the welfare discussions, and ethical angle play major role in public discussions in many societies.
Public reasoning is useful in understanding social choices and social decisions. In dealing with public discussions and social decisions, one should be thinking about the level of attention the issues get from the public. The economic theories and social choices theories depend mostly on reasoning; and logic which takes place among people in society. One should look at the social decisions and social choices not only with data based and logic-based reasoning; but look at them in Philosophical angle as well. Leadership is required to deal with social choices in any society. Moral sentiments also play a significant role in making social decisions and choices. Leaders are bound to moral sentiments, ethics and philosophy in making social decisions and in deciding what the society needs.
International help, and globalization can help developing and under developed regions in taking social choices/decisions. Educated and women can play significant role in establishments and institutions working on social issues and welfare. Different political parties present in a country can effect the outcome of social choices and social decisions. In general, in any society, some of the social decisions can be complete, some can be agreed upon; and some may remain incomplete decisions. Particularly, in some of the social decisions, when deadlock is reached, instead of dragging them till win-loose situations, particular decisions can be delayed till social consensus is reached; and a win-win situation can be created later. Overall Public Discussions, Opinions, and Reasoning play major role in achieving social welfare; in addition to the efforts and measures of institutions, establishments and policy makers.
Study of Macro Economics and Consumer Behaviour: Nobel Laurate Angus Deaton studied Macro Economics. Particularly Consumption in different perspectives. His work includes areas such as Individual Consumer Decisions, Household decisions on consumption, Analysis of Consumption, Poverty and Welfare. Tremendous amount of thought process went in policy making; in keeping metrics for measuring progress, and in including relevant measurements. Macro-economic indicators include Poverty levels in the countries as well. Finding and observing how ordinary people live in society is important before policy making. Agricultural farmers, Agricultural families can give lot of inputs to Policy Making. Consumption patterns of Children are also to be studied as part of Macro Economic Consumption. In a Growing economy, per capita Calories Consumption in any country should increase. Raising consumer Prices, Inflation are also the factors to be considered while studying Macro Economic consumption. The accuracy of data and quality of data plays major role in deciding economic measures for any society. Some of the Intellectual challenges may be there in implementing different economic measures. Concepts such as Spending and Saving are useful for analysing Consumer Consumption from different angles. Aggregation of People and Aggregation of Goods are important for measuring macro economy.
Angus Deaton developed Conceptual models related to Economics and Consumer Behaviour with theoretical structures. The relationship between Savings and Consumption is also studied. According to some of the theories, Younger people are saving much in early age; and they are spending it in their old age. Labour Supply and Consumer Goods Demand in the market is also studied. Economic Life Cycle, Business Cycle and Consumption Life Cycle are some of the life cycle models evolved over a period of time. Developing countries are experiencing credit markets and growing consumptions. There is relationship between Consumption Theory and Expectancy Theory. Income of Consumer and his Consumption are related variables. In an Economic Model, not only individual data items but also aggregate variables are important in finding relationships between different variables in the Economy.
Global Poverty and Experimental Interventions: Nobel Laurate Abhijit Banerjee’s work involved development of Experimental Approaches in dealing with Global Poverty. Empirical Research on Poverty and Development, and Field Experiments are carried out by him. RCT (Randomized Control Trails) are conducted to study the interventions in Poverty and Development. Day-to-Day Practices of Economics related questions are being used in experiments on respondents. RCTs are being incorporated in Economics in an experimental basis. RCT tests the effect of certain interventions in the economics. Different data points are used in studying different behavioural aspects of people in economy. Variables such as Markets and Money are also considered in economics research. Fundamental behaviour of people is observed by conducting RCT tests on people in the economy. People who are influential in the society are studied with respect to their network in relation to economic interventions. Abhijit Banerjee work focused more on experimentation and interventions in economics rather than developing economic models.
Overall, Economics has got larger scope; it can solve bigger problems. Being more generous with poor people proved that poor won’t stay lazier; and they do work; Developmental Economics is also part of this researchers’ work. Small amount of wealth today has more wealth value tomorrow. Along with time, wealth also increases in normal conditions. RCTs are useful in following individuals and their growth economically over a period of time with experimental interventions. Some of the psychological experiments with economic interventions are being carried out in studying effect on people in a society. Overall, Abhijit Banerjee work involved Studying Global Poverty, Developmental Economics, and Behavioural Economics.
Hope I was able to Convey, whatever I learned.
Thank you. Best Regards,
Dr.Goparaju Purna Sudhakar,
References:
- Amartya Sen (2017), “Collective Choice and Social Welfare”, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, Magdalen College, University of Oxford, January 18, 2017, Available online at https://youtu.be/CeovG5UbcmQ
- Angus Deaton (2015), “Measuring and Understanding Behavior, Welfare and Poverty”, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 2015, Available online at https://youtu.be/y7rJezyNK20
- Abhijit Banerjee (2019), “Nobel Prize Lecture in Economic Sciences”, 2019, Available online at https://youtu.be/XvyMO7CmFlk