Sir, – Suggesting that the developer of a Dunnes Stores voucher scheme warrants the Nobel Prize for economics, Steve Coronella mentions that when the Nobel award system began in 1901, the dismal science wasn’t considered (An Irishman’s Diary, March 27th). This is true but doesn’t fully convey how much the remit and perception of economics changed during the 20th century.
In his book Utopia for Realists, Rutger Bergman makes the interesting point that “at the start of the 20th century the US government employed a total of one economist”.
Seemingly that individual’s role was in ornithology, keeping track of bird populations.
It was a few decades later that Kuznets developed the concept of national income, and its surrogates of gross national and domestic products followed.
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These were initially intended as macroeconomic measures but soon became targets, and since then governments have employed ever greater numbers of economists.
It is still hard to discern whether the presence of economists makes any difference – that is, if they are more akin to mechanics who fix things or meteorologists who describe them – but there is no getting away from their influence and crystal-clear hindsight in the modern world. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN O’BRIEN,
Kinsale,
Co Cork.
