Brian Leiter shared an amusing quip from Alex Rosenberg:
So, the... Nobel Prize for “economic science” gets awarded to a guy who says markets are efficient and there are no bubbles—Eugene Fama (“I don’t know what a credit bubble means. I don’t even know what a bubble means. These words have become popular. I don’t think they have any meaning”—New Yorker, 2010), along with another economist—Robert Shiller, who says that markets are pretty much nothing but bubbles, “Most of the action in the aggregate stock market is bubbles.” (NY Times, October 19, 2013) Imagine the parallel in physics or chemistry or biology—the prize is split between Einstein and Bohr for their disagreement about whether quantum mechanics is complete, or Pauling and Crick for their dispute about whether the gene is a double helix or a triple, or between Gould and Dawkins for their rejection of one another’s views about the units of selection. In these disciplines Nobel Prizes are given to reward a scientist who has established something every one else can bank on. In economics, “Not so much.” This wasn’t the first time they gave the award to an economist who says one thing and another one who asserts its direct denial. Cf. Myrdal and Hayek in 1974. What’s really going on here? Well, Shiller gave the game away in a NY Times interview when he said of Fama, “It’s like having a friend who is a devout believer of another religion.” Actually it’s probably two denominations in the same religion.
Ugh. The prize was first and foremost in recognition of Fama, Shiller, and Hansen's empiricism in finance. In the sixties, Fama proposed a model of efficient markets, and it held up to testing. Later, both Fama, Shiller, and Hansen showed further tests didn't hold up. Their mutual conclusion: the efficient market hypothesis is mostly right, and while there is no short-term predictability based on publicly available information, there is some long-term predictability. Since the result is fairly messy, Fama and Shiller have differences about what they emphas...
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.