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… is from page 141 of my colleague Peter Boettke’s 2019 talk “The Role of the Economist in a Free Society,” as this talk is printed in Pete’s 2021 collection, The Struggle for a Better World [2]:
In his Nobel banquet toast, he [F.A. Hayek] said simply that if he had been consulted, he never would have advocated awarding Nobel Prizes to economists for the simple reason that no economic thinker should ever be provided with such public recognition, as it falsely provides a sense of authority that can be safely trusted to no economist.
DBx: Hayek was wise.
I believe that there were a few Nobel-laureate economists who proved not to let the Prize go to their heads – laureates who did not mistakenly come to feel that the Prize gave them knowledge that they, in fact, cannot possibly possess. Hayek was one of these wise souls, as were Jim Buchanan and Ronald Coase and Lin Ostrom. And as is Vernon Smith.